"Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu": https://bit.ly/488Y0yH

Literally.

This book made me feel inadequate, like I hadn't lived life to the fullest. Thank god I still have some time left, but I could never catch up.

Now I know Tom Freston. I even know the outline of most of these stories, a bit of depth, but my mind was blown reading all the detail in this book, never have I known such a nice guy to be so successful and get around so much and...

The thing is Tom is down to earth. Possesses no airs. Speaks to you as an equal, and actually speaks to you. He ran the cash machine known as MTV Networks, but when you talked to him it was like connecting with the guy who grew up next door.

Tom is the best corporate manager I've ever encountered. He's not dictatorial, he delegates responsibility, and although he can be serious, he focuses on fun, adventure...

And this book is all about that.

I know the backstory, although I didn't know his father suffered from PTSD, before we knew what that was, never mind give it a label. Some called it shellshock, but there were a ton of men who on the surface seemed to be living full lives, having families and bringing home the bacon, who were tortured inside as a result of the war.

And going to St. Michael's, I knew that too...

But I didn't know about the summer adventures in Lake George. Not only was it a blast, Tom met and became friends with a ton of people. That's what it takes, getting along, without sacrificing your identity, knowing people...because you're always going to run into them down the road, when you least expect it, and Tom does.

So to avoid the draft, Tom goes to business school at NYU. What I did not know was he was the valedictorian. Funny how Tom never told me that, since he makes a point of saying that Phillipe Dauman kept on bragging about getting perfect SATs. I hate those people. It's one of the reasons I live on the west coast. No one asks you what you got on the college boards, where you went to college, you're just here, you just exist. And attorney Dauman gains power and terminates Tom and ruins Viacom/Paramount, but that's towards the end of the arc.

So Tom goes into advertising, but gives up when he's got the chance to work on the Charmin account and a girl he knows calls him from Paris and implores him to quit and come travel with her across the Sahara. Which Tom does. There are people who can't finish anything. But it's also a special skill to know when to leave a job, to have faith in yourself.

There begins a year traveling through Europe, Africa and Asia...with a ton of time spent in Afghanistan and India. And you can't do that anymore, the world is more sophisticated, but Tom did, when it was still wide open and safe.

And then he started a clothing import business.

One of those friends from Lake George inherited some bucks and Tom convinced him to invest and they built a company that ran very profitably, for a number of years. It was much bigger than Tom has ever let on to me, they sold clothing to major department stores like Bloomingdale's as well as boutiques.

But laws change and it's no longer profitable and Tom is out of a job and he answers an ad for what ends up being MTV. He's selling himself. And I knew he had this import business, but I did not know he graduated #1 from NYU... People can smell it. Tom got a gig.

And there begins the MTV ride.

This book is not what I expected. I thought it'd be the in-depth story of MTV, and the bones are there, but the facts, the details have been told multiple times elsewhere. What you've got here is the business end of the story, dealing with Viacom, Sumner Redstone acquiring it, taking Sumner and his girlfriend to sex clubs in Thailand at the mogul's insistence.

There's a lot of inside dope like that. One of the best being the story of meeting Fidel Castro. Then again, Tom went with Brian Grazer and Les Moonves and Graydon Carter and... I knew Jimmy Buffett, who Tom almost got kidnapped in Africa with, but I don't hang out with any of these people, yet when you're with Tom you don't think that he does either.

There's more detail about Tom's tenure at Viacom/Paramount than has been previously made public, and more about dealing with Oprah, Shane Smith/Vice and Bono/Red thereafter. Tom did not take another corporate job when he got blown out. Others would need it for their ego, Tom created a much more fruitful and fulfilling life. Building television stations in Afghanistan?

Now if you know Tom, you should absolutely read this book.

And if you don't...

As stated above, this is not the story of MTV, but the story of Tom's life, from soup to nuts, from then until now.

Most execs who write these books are boasting, all the while telling you how you can do it, even though you're a completely different person.

That's not what "Unplugged" is. It's the story of a middle class guy who got bitten by the travel bug and morphed into a corporate executive whilst living in a rock and roll culture (as for MTV, Tom loved music, then again, we all did back then, in a way subsequent generations just cannot understand, music drove the culture) who then got promoted to the point where the status was real, but the pond was poisonous.

It's the tale of an individual.

Like I said, I felt inadequate reading this book and you may too. Because Tom has been everywhere with seemingly everybody. And it doesn't happen because he's busy working the connections, kissing up to get ahead, but because he's a good executive and a GOOD HANG!

But he's also a leader. He was the one who got everybody to go to Kabul for New Year's back in the seventies. Someone's got to come up with the ideas, someone's got to be the ringleader, someone's got to push the needle forward, into the unknown, and Tom did that over and over again.

And, he hired Jill Lumpkin for his clothing company and she's still in Asia to this day.

And the thing about Lumpkin... She was Tom Rush's girlfriend, she's on the cover of "The Circle Game," he wrote "No Regrets" for her, and Tom discusses with James Taylor...did anything ever happen between the two of them? And it's just amazing, in a nation of 200 million how one person, who is not famous, can be known by multiple people from different backgrounds, but...

I couldn't put "Unplugged" down. It's not the kind of book you can read in an afternoon, it's deeper and longer than that. It's a real book, not a typical rock memoir, not an afterthought, a cash-in.

How will you feel about Tom after reading it?

Well, it's all there...

And if you know Tom, like I do, all you can say is WOW!


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