Julie Gordon, Founder of the ‘Velvet Rope’ and A&R Exec, Dies at 65
by Jem Aswad · Variety
Julie Gordon, a longtime music executive who is perhaps best known as the founder of the Velvet Rope, an influential mid-’90s online forum that was the first widely read online music-biz gossip site, has died. She had been undergoing treatment for cancer for several years, chronicling her struggle on social media with frustration and emotion but a moving combination of realism and cheer, even as her prognosis grew negative. She was 65.
A friend tells Variety that she passed Wednesday evening, “listening to Joni Mitchell.”
Over the course of her music industry career, Gordon held roles at Famous Music Publishing, BMI, and The Enclave, an EMI-distributed label, where she worked closely with the then-new Scottish act Belle and Sebastian. Yet she is probably best known as the founder and moderator of the Velvet Rope, which she launched in 1995 after taking over a music folder called “Record Industry Dirt” on AOL.
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The VR was a hotbed of mudslinging, ass-kissing, ass-kicking, half-truths and untruths, moderated with energy and no shortage of attitude by Gordon, whose keyword “JGFlash” was as familiar as her actual name and conjures memories of a spinning “loading” logo and the staticky screech of ’90s modems. Gossip columns had long been a staple of music trade magazines, but on on the Velvet Rope, readers could see a response published not in days but… hours!
“At last, people in the entertainment biz can say ‘My lips are sealed’ and mean it,” current Variety senior music critic Chris Willman wrote for Entertainment Weekly in October of 1996. “These days, music-industry types who have trouble keeping confidences are more likely to let their fingers do the squawking. The place to let it all hang out, gossip-wise, is The Velvet Rope, a limited-access, invitation-only forum for music-industry professionals on America Online. Hundreds post on the bulletin board, while thousands lurk silently, hoping their names will — or won’t — come up amid the cyberbuzz.”
Gordon was a sharp, snarky, perceptive, occasionally judgmental but morally sound voice on the music, the business and the people — and judgment was certainly necessary. Against the backdrop of the exploding dot-com boom, a music industry drunk on soaring CD profits spent outrageous sums of money as it staggered obliviously toward its doom, which was lurking right around the corner in the form of Napster.
“If not everyone in the industry reads VR, practically all are aware of it, if only because of the fires they have had to put out,” Willman continued. “Sony Music chief Thomas Mottola felt compelled to do an interview with Billboard last year just to deny rumors of firings being spread in the folder. Though most rockers who visit stay in lurk mode, Courtney Love has dropped by to squelch rumors — and start new ones.”
However, the honeymoon was a brief one, as Gordon left AOL because of the platform’s obscenity policies: In order to swear, members would have to pay an additional $10 per month (yes, people paid for AOL).
“In an industry dominated by images, the one place where CEOs and interns have an equal voice is in my little area,” Gordon told Wired in a July 1997 article. “It’s not because they wanted me to charge that I’m so pissed, but because they wanted me to charge for a Terms of Service exemption.”
She continued working as an executive and later published an unsigned-band tipsheet for music executives, but the industry’s overall profits would be cut in half in the coming years as illegal downloading decimated sales. Gordon raised her twins, relocated for Florida and served as director of operations at Israel Cancer Association USA, which raises funds for cancer research in Israel. Even as she struggled with her own illness, she offered generous guidance and encouragement to friends and even strangers battling cancer, as evidenced by multiple posts on her Facebook page.
Yet her perspectives on the music industry never ceased: In 2017, she wrote an op-ed for Variety titled “Sexual Harassment and the Music Business: The Song Remains the Same.”