Jon Platt Honored with SESAC's “Visionary Award”

People have always asked me what's the difference between a good song and a hit song, and I always say the hit is the one you don't have to explain. My early days in the music business, I got started when I was a kid when music first hit me. Music was the one thing that kept my attention. I evolved in my teen years to be an aspiring DJ. That's where the Big John name really started to take hold. That was my DJ name, and it really started to take shape. For me, it's made me the creative executive that I am right now. Even to this day, I can hear a new song or meet a new songwriter and wonder what I would play this record. Then it was a little while after that when I had my now famous conversation with Chuck D from Public Enemy, where Chuck D told me, 'I think you have a lot to offer to the music business.' That's where my dream began. Next thing you know, I find people in LA, start managing them. A little bit after that, I get them a publishing deal with EMI. I would literally just take over the EMI conference room and have meetings, make my long-distance phone calls from there. I was before I even had a cell phone. I would use that phone for long-distance calls. I would get tapes from them, I would eat them. I was like, my hub for everything. They even fed me. I would go in the tape room and borrow DATs from the DAT machine. And I would say, 'Wait a minute, I understand who's the guy working out of our conference room and taking all of our DATs to make music and having meetings?' It was John. He literally showed up and set up all this, figured out how to work this industry a little bit. Shortly after I met him and he was working out of the conference room, we had a job become available, and so I gave him his first job. I'm so proud to say I think that he's great with people, and I think he has great ears, and he is an honest person who works really hard. I think John has been successful because he has the heart and soul and creative instincts of a great African-American, and then he has this intangible thing called 'sacral,' which is a Jewish word for wisdom. I think the combination of those things has made John an incredible executive. I think one of my talents, so they say, is knowing when to step in and when to step out. I rarely comment on a song while it's being written during the writing process. I learned that early on in my career, and I'm just very truthful. What I've learned in all my years is that the ones that are at the top, it's not an accident that they're at the top. They just work the hardest, and they're at the top and they still work hard. It drives me to be honest with you, it drives me to work harder. So now you know my role. The new number one record for me is the people that I work with having number-one records. Like I say, I'm in the 'we' business now, and I want to see people succeed.

If I wasn't a publishing executive, honestly I don't know what I'd be doing. Music grabbed me at such an early age. But what I can say is I'm here for the long haul, and music is in me like it runs through my veins. I am who I am, but a lot of people helped get me here. I think if you work hard enough and you're true to what you do, you will get lucky along the way sometimes too. It all comes, some of it is skill and some of it is love. I'll take it off, man. Thank you so much, man, for taking a risk on me, for giving me the support in signing incredible writers and having vision. As a result of what you invested in me, it made me a lot sharper as a writer and made me a lot sharper as a businessman to identify talent and develop it. So thank you, brother, for having a vision.