Lennie Petze

Compiling a complete list of Lennie Petze’s achievements in the music business is an effort of Epic proportions – pun and capitalization intended – since for over 50 years he demonstrated an uncanny knack for spotting new talent, anticipating future trends and crafting musical magic. A giant among A&R execs, he launched the careers of dozens of major artists in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, among them Boston and Cyndi Lauper, winning more than 100 gold, platinum and multiplatinum awards for acts he signed and singles/albums he produced. It’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to overstate the scope of Petze’s influence on American rock and pop during the last few decades of the 20th century and his role in up-and-coming artists’ success in the early 21st. 

MUSICAL BEGINNINGS, THE RHYTHM ROCKERS, THE RONDELS 

Born on May 5, 1942, Leonard James Petze grew up in Weymouth, Massachusetts (about 12 miles south of Boston) and music was a “huge part” of his family, he said in 2022, with a piano in the living room, his sisters singing and playing, and his father often joining on banjo. His interest in music exploded in January 1956 when the then 13-year-old watched Elvis Presley make his first nationally televised performance (on The Dorsey Brothers’ Stage Show); that broadcast inspired him to start playing guitar right away, since it was “a sound I’d never heard,” he said, explaining that “radio was dominated by crooners and big bands in those days.” 

In 1959, just three years after his Elvis-induced epiphany, Petze formed The Rhythm Rockers with four other teens: his cousin Jimmy Petze; Eddie Grispi and Nicky Latteo of Weymouth; and Ray Pizzi of Quincy. A local label released the band’s first single, “Madness,” which saw some airplay on several Boston stations, but the ‘60s brought major changes to the band’s lineup, with Grispi and Latteo departing for the military and marriage respectively. 

Drummer Lenny Collins of Braintree joined the band, now renamed The Rondels, and one of the new lineup’s first recordings, the standard “Greensleeves” (recorded at Ace Recording Studios, where Petze worked sweeping floors) caught the ear of renowned producer Bugs Bower, who landed them a record deal (before any of the band members had reached 11th grade). In 1961, when their song “Back Beat No. 1” made it to #66 in the Billboard Hot 100, the group appeared on American Bandstand. 

FIRST LABEL JOBS, A&R VICE PRESIDENT, SIGNING BOSTON 

The Rondels broke up in ‘68, but Petze wanted to continue doing something related to music because he’d become fascinated with the recording process. Opportunity knocked when one of his friends from high school left his promotions job at Mercury Records’ Boston office and recommended Petze as his replacement, thus launching a career he’d never dreamed was possible. After his time with Mercury, where he was responsible for the Phillips, Smash and Fontana labels, he became Northeast promo manager at Apple Records before moving back to local promotion for Elektra, MGM and Uni Records. 

Petze joined Epic Records in 1970 as the label’s Boston-area promotions manager, beginning his 21-year tenure with the label. Rising briskly through the ranks, he was promoted to Northeast regional promotion manager in ‘72, director of East Coast A&R in ‘75 and vice president of A&R in ‘77.  

His most talked-about early signing came in December 1975, when he met with a friend from Boston who said, “Petze I’m going to make you a hero” and played him Boston’s demo tape; Petze inked the group immediately. “It exploded out of my JBLs,” he recalled. “They’d been passed on by Epic [and several other major labels] before, but as soon as I heard this demo tape, I said it was the biggest band in the world.” Boston’s self-titled first album, which Epic released in August ‘76, became the fastest-selling debut by any American group in history, cracking the one-million-unit mark within three months. It reached #3 in the Billboard 200, stayed on that chart for 132 weeks (about two and a half years) and three of the singles became top-40 hits. 

PORTRAIT VICE PRESIDENT, SIGNING CYNDI LAUPER, OTHER NOTABLE ACTS  

In 1980, in a pivotal career move, Petze became vice president and general manager of Epic sublabel Portrait Records, established in 1976. Heart was its only nationally successful act at the time, and the label had failed to sign any new top-selling new artists, so Petze’s directive, simply put, was to resuscitate Portrait and save it from dissolution. And, as the charts proved with authority, that’s precisely what he did.  

As if born with an internal crystal ball, the first acts he signed were Saga, Aldo Nova, Eddy Grant and Cyndi Lauper, whose debut Portrait releases set each artist on a path to household-name status: Saga’s Worlds Apart sold 500,000 copies; Aldo Nova’s Aldo Nova sold one million; Eddy Grant’s My Turn to Love You sold two million; and Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual reached a jaw-dropping seven million. Sales of She’s So Unusual and its four singles made Lauper the most successful female artist ever on Epic or an Epic sublabel. Shrewdly, Petze used that fact to persuade CBS UK that Sade should release her debut album on Portrait, resulting in 1984’s Diamond Life, which sold seven million copies, matching Lauper’s record-shattering debut. 

EPIC/PORTRAIT SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, SUPPORTING NEW ENGLAND ARTISTS 

In 1982, with the success of his initial signings now legendary in the A&R world, Petze became senior vice president of A&R for Epic and Portrait. While working closely with the existing Epic talent roster – which included Michael Jackson, REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, The Clash, The Charlie Daniels Band, Jeff Beck and many other leading acts – he signed an eclectic variety of notable newcomers including Europe, Accept, Wet Willie, Heatwave, Don Johnson and ‘Til Tuesday. 

Being from the Boston area, Petze supported bands and solo artists from the city and greater New England throughout his career, signing many regional acts that he felt deserved a major label in addition to Boston and ‘Til Tuesday; among them were Barry Goudreau’s Orion The Hunter, Face To Face, New Man, Phil Gentile, Angela Clemmons, Livingston Taylor and Orchestra Luna. Within a few years of his taking control at Epic and Portrait, four of the labels’ acts had earned Grammy nominations for Best New Artist, with three of them taking home the actual award. In 1988, Petze was promoted yet again, this time to senior vice president for both Epic and Imagine; among the acts he signed over the next several years was New York City-based glam-metal group Danger Danger. 

PETZE MUSIC GROUP, AUREUS RECORDS, LATER PROJECTS, DEATH 

After 23 enormously successful years on the major-label side of the music biz, Petze left Epic in 1991 and moved to Cape Cod, where he founded Petze Music Group, the goal of which was to identify and develop promising New England-based artists specifically. When early projects with Steve Sweeney, XXL, Head, Cactus Land and Laura Diaz produced limited commercial success, he changed direction, founding pop-, dance-, house-, rap- and R&B-focused Aureus Records in ‘93. Acts he signed included The Outhere Brothers, whose debut single, “Boom Boom Boom,” sold over a million copies and whose song “La La Hey Hey” hit #1 in the UK, and Fruit De La Passion, whose Tic Tic Tac album reached the top 10. 

Petze sold Aureus Records’ assets to Warlock Records in 1996 and began what he called his “semi-retirement,” though he remained active, even hands-on, in various projects including Gene Loves Jezebel, Larissa, Eyra Gail and rapper Rakim’s 2009 album The Seventh Seal, which reached #9 in the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Between 2010 and his death on June 16, 2026 at age 84, he was credited on more than 25 albums as everything from producer, executive producer and audio producer to arranger and background vocalist. 

Asked in 2014 about acts he wishes he’d signed before they landed deals with other labels, Petze admitted that there were a few, among them The Cars and Bon Jovi, while pointing out that developing artists is even more important than discovering them. “I just missed,” he said about The Cars, adding that he wished he’d gone to see the band live before they signed with Elektra in late 1977. “But, as I was taught very early on in A&R, it’s not who you don’t sign. It’s what you do with who you do sign.” 

(by D.S Monahan)