José Menendez’s Music Industry Past Revealed: “You Did Not Want to Incur His Wrath,” Says Former Colleague

When headlines blared that businessman José Menendez had been shot 15 times along with his wife Kitty while watching TV in their Beverly Hills home on the evening of August 20, 1989, it registered as just another murder victim for most people, but those in the record industry instantly recognized the name.

Not long before, José Menendez had held a top post at RCA Records — home to Diana Ross, Kenny Rogers and Hall & Oates, among other artists, at the time — where he was tasked with turning around the label’s sagging revenue. He also signed Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, featuring a young Ricky Martin, while there and oversaw hit records by Mr. Mister, Starship and Eurythmics.

Indeed, he was such a known entity in the biz, and the story of his murder at 45, and subsequent arrests of sons Lyle and Erik Menendez (21 and 18 at the time), fascinated so many, that even irreverent radio tipsheet Hits magazine featured the brothers on the cover of their Mad magazine-inspired anniversary issue at the time.

“When I picked up the New York Times over breakfast and read about [the murders], I was flabbergasted,” says one industry vet who worked with José for four years but prefers anonymity (“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about José Menendez”). “It wouldn’t have occurred to me such a thing would happen. He was always straight with me, and even gave me responsibilities that helped revitalize my career. At the time of the trial, I was approached by both sides as a potential character witness, but I managed to avoid that then, and now.”

Retired music business executive Roy Lott was in a mid-level position at RCA when José Menendez was in charge of the company’s record operations in the early to mid-80s. “I don’t remember any specific dealings with him other than a general impression that he was overbearing and not even trying to be liked,” he recalled. “After he was murdered, the FBI showed up at my office to interview me because I was on his final holiday card list.”

George Ghiz, who still manages Mr. Mister’s Richard Page and signed the band to RCA by way of A&R exec Paul Atkinson, says of José, “I loved the guy. He was a hard-driving guy and didn’t suffer fools, but he was one of the few who came from outside the music business that got it. I thought he was a genius.”

The Cuban-born José had an incredible rags-to-riches story. The son of well-to-do parents who, after Fidel Castro came to power in 1960, sent him to the United States alone at 16 years old, he arrived in Hazleton, Pennsylvania speaking very little English and lived in the attic of a cousin’s home. 

As depicted in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, José, attending Southern Illinois University on a swimming scholarship, met blond beauty queen Mary Louise Andersen, a lively communications major two years his senior who everyone called Kitty. The two married in 1963 despite the objections of both families when Jose was 19 and Kitty 21. (They are played by Javier Bardem and Chloe Sevigny, respectively, in the series.)

The first trial of brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez.

Ted Soqui/Sygma/Getty Images

After moving to New York, José transferred to Queens College, washing dishes at the 21 Club while earning his accounting degree. He was later hired at the prestigious firm of Coopers & Lybrand, overseeing clients like Lyon’s Container Service in Illinois, who were so impressed with his suggestions they lured him away and named him comptroller. Within three years, he was the company’s president, and by the time he was 35, he had been named executive vice president in charge of U.S. operations at Hertz, the rent-a-car company which was then a subsidiary of RCA Corp.

José was named chief operating officer of the company’s recorded music division, RCA-Ariola, directing worldwide operations at a salary of $500,000 a year ($1.9 million in today dollars). He came into the label as then-head Bob Summer had just signed disastrous overpriced deals with Diana Ross and Kenny Rogers. “At the time, the company was divided between the older, out-of-touch incompetent employees who had been there forever and a thoroughly corrupt promotion department,” says a former colleague. “José was brought in to clean it up and ‘generate profit’ for the corporation. Executives at RCA were fungible. … If you turned around the rent-a-car business, maybe you could do the same for the record labels.”

“When he came over from Hertz, he knew absolutely nothing about the record business,” his work associate continues. “But he was a very quick study. He was incredibly bright. He had no feel for the music, but he picked up on how the business was done.”

José brought in RCA U.K. head Don Ellis, a veteran A&R exec who previously worked at Epic Records, to head the U.S. labels. Ellis hired his previous CBS Records colleague Gregg Geller, who José promptly put in charge of the Elvis Presley catalog, moving it over from Nashville, where Joe Galante was only too happy to relinquish it after the sales spike from Presley’s death in 1977 had cooled off.

An ex-RCA employee says José Menendez was “tough and a browbeater, particularly when faced with incompetence or people he did not respect. … You did not want to incur his wrath. That said, I got along well with him. I guess because I knew what I was doing. I didn’t try to bullshit him. He took input from people he respected. He was different toward me than virtually everyone else in the company then. Things were improved at RCA under José. We were having hits. I remember going to see the Eurythmics with José at the Ritz and he couldn’t have been more charming. He was chatting up Annie Lennox. He was absolutely great with her.”

With RCA Corp. about to be acquired by General Electric in 1985 (who would soon unload the music holdings to German company Bertelsmann), José was on the way out as veteran music executive Elliott Goldman was brought in to restructure the record business. He tapped fellow industry standbys Rick Dobbis and Bob Buziak to run the record labels.

“I only met him once,” Dobbis says of José Menendez. “I was brought into his office and he seemed pretty distracted, like he didn’t care. Maybe he knew he wasn’t going to be there much longer.”

When GE Chairman Jack Welch failed to offer José the presidency, he left in 1986, taking his family cross-country from New York to Calabasas, then to Beverly Hills, where he moved into a Spanish-styled $5 million mansion once owned by Michael Jackson and Elton John in the shadow of Rodeo Drive. 

Professionally, José went on to join indie film studio Carolco — home of Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo movies — where he was put in charge of their failing subsidiary International Video Entertainment (IVE), a distribution company acquired from a porn distributor named Noel Bloom. After losing $20 million the year he was hired, Menendez turned the company around by firing much of the staff and forcing the exit of Bloom, whose adult film background embarrassed the straight-laced Cuban. By 1987, IVE boasted profits of $8 million after barely avoiding bankruptcy the year before, merging with Minnesota record distributor Lieberman to form LIVE, giving Menendez his next fiefdom.

“I remember once meeting him in his office with both of us smoking cigarettes like chimneys, and he excused himself to take a phone call,” says Ghiz. “When he returned, he blurted out, ‘George, my oldest son is a bad seed.’ And that was it. In all our interactions, I never saw any indication that Jose was sexually attracted to men.”

At the time of his death, José Menendez still harbored political dreams of running for Senate in Florida, grooming his family as a Latin Kennedys — one of the reasons he drove his two sons so hard.

Last year, José was accused by former Menudo member Roy Rosselló of sexual assault. In the wake of Murphy’s series and renewed interest in the case, it could factor into efforts to release the imprisoned Kyle and Lyle Menendez, both of whom are serving life sentences. Their cases are currently being reconsidered by newly elected L.A. district attorney Nathan Hochman, with the next proceeding scheduled for March.

In a telling memory, José’s one-time employee recounts: “My wife and I were sitting with Jose and Kitty at the RCA table for the very first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dinner in 1986. Because we just recently had a son, they began to discuss childbirth. It was at that point Kitty revealed she had been pregnant with both of her boys for 10 months. When I learned what happened later, I immediately thought back to her comment. Think of that as you will. Who knows what it means.”