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Speaker 5: Last time we were with listeners, we of course were
looking at the first Saturday Night's main event from nineteen
eighty five, and we were really interested to see that
in the credit role at the end that they identified
the designer of the Saturday Night's Main Event logo, which
as we know, is fairly iconic.
Speaker 2: Totally, I mean, it's it's one of the most.
Speaker 6: I mean they still basically used to this day a
variation of the of the same logo today.
Speaker 5: Right, and it's back on the table, of course, is
the WWET Saturday Night's Main Event going again. But you know,
the thought process was, man, what what what would it
be like to have, you know, worked for WWF in
a graphic design capacity at this point because so much
of the logos and things that were generated around this
early boom period for the company still like the Saturday
Night's Main Event logo and WrestleMania and other things that
they they're still around today and pretty much substantially the
same form, and so you know, it's like, what what
what can we know? What can we find out about
what it was like to design it the point we
saw that his name was Brian Penry, and yeah, we
got him like we do, like we do. We have
found Brian Penry, the designer, as we'll get into, of
so many iconic WWF logos that we all associate with
the glory days of the company and the product and
we're really pleased to welcome Brian Now onto the show
for a special two part conversation about his life and
times in the mid to late eighties with the World
Wrestling Federation. Brian, it's really great to have you. Thanks
for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thanks guys, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 5: Let's start right there with Saturday Night's main event. We'll
get into a whole heck of a lot of the
things that you've done for the WWF in the course
of this two part conversation, but would like to start
with that one, the Saturday Night's made event logo. It's back,
you know, and in fact the show has a whole
throwback theme to it the way they're structuring it these days.
What about that piece of work to get us started
here that you recall.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I was there from.
Speaker 7: The mid.
Speaker 4: Nineteen eighty four to mid nineteen eighty seven. It was
a fear stretch and I had worked with Vincent Linda
prior to that. But I got to tell you, in
all honesty that that whole period was a hyper drive blury.
And I don't just say this like, oh, I was working.
Speaker 2: Like a dog.
Speaker 4: Everybody everybody worked like a dog, and many of us
were in there quite often seven days a week in
the office at that point, various offices in Greenwich and Stanford, Connecticut.
And it was I can come back to this later,
but you know, they outgrew three offices. They were building
office buildings because the staff grew so fast, and by
the time each one was built, the staff had outgrown it.
It was. And the fourth time out, Vince just threw
up his hands and rented office space on Summer Street
in Stamford. And finally they wound up with the building
off of exit nine off of Route ninety five, the
big black, kind of big structure with now the you know,
the WWE so called pirate flag. And but I mean,
just through this whole period, to be perfectly honest, that
logo and I'm I'm honored that it's become.
Speaker 2: As I.
Speaker 4: But I gotta tell you, it was just kind of
like this was typical, okay with Dick et Brisol and NBC.
We're doing this, we're doing that. We need the logo
four days ago, right, I mean that are for the course.
And so I if I sit here, I tell you, oh,
you know, I went through these commotions and shenanigans and yeah,
I was a process and I spoke to none of that.
I just banged it out. I just banged it out,
and it'd be perfectly honest with you. I wasn't crazy.
I thought it's okay, but I mean, I wasn't proud
of it, and it was just one of fifty things
on came across my desk or my drawing board more
accurately daily, And I'm I'm you. You actually educated me
to the fact that it's back right right, don't you know.
I've worked on so many things since my tenure with
the WWF that this was news to me. It's great,
it's kind of cool, but it's one of the last
things I ever worked on. I would have thought I
had a radioactive half life and would show up, you know,
decades later.
Speaker 5: So who knows radioactive half let it's good way to
put it by you mentioned Dick Ebersoll and bosses. As
the listeners know, we've spent a lot of time wondering
what it was like, Yeah, to be around Dick Ebersol
at a time when he had such massive influence over
the direction Vince would take the WWF, and really is
such a I think underdiscovered part of WWF history is
Dick Eversoll's role in things. Brian, I know you're in
the room occasionally with Dick. Can you kind of give
us a sense of what it was like to work
in and around him as in nineteen eighty five as
he takes a keen interest in pro wrestling in the WWF.
Speaker 6: I just want to interject one thing too, especially because
you were there before as well, Like, there's such a
shift in I imagine a shift in dynamic between you know,
working in eighty four and then all of a sudden
in eighty five Dick Eversol comes in that too.
Speaker 2: Was just I was curious about that.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean honestly and truly, my relationship with
with Vince Solenda goes back to the late seventies and
there's a story right there. But just and I'd like
to come back to that and flesh out how we
of course we met and so on and so forth
and everything evolved into that creative director role with them.
But yeah, Dick, Dick, you know it was it was
really kind of a funny deal we all, uh I
say we meaning the WWF staff. It's very interesting. Vince
was insightful from the standpoint of recognizing that he's out
now courting network brass at major companies TV networks, and
this was this was the infancy of cable, never mind
streaming that we have now, and he's speaking to very
powerful executive types that are suit and tie dudes from
the ground up, and he just I don't know if
there was something that that a particular incident that inspired
this or something, but he put out an ed act
pretty quickly around the office that he wanted everyone in
suit and tie. Wow, it was wasn't I mean just
a sports jacket or something at very least a tie.
And he wanted the women that worked for the company
to be, you know, nicely dressed, no jeans, you know, pants,
suits whatever. He just he just wanted to exude professionalism
and he wanted to you know, they were they were
dealing with big banks on their finances. He wanted a
banker to walk in and I think you know it
was a hippie enclave or something, or you know, guys
dealing with wrestling. You know, you didn't want somebody to
have a beer belly and walk by with a beer
can in their hand or something. That's an overstatement, but
he wanted to project a very very professional image and
in a very predictable way, you know, not nothing, just
just he didn't want to look like a bunch of slabs,
you know, and one could hardly call Dick ever saw
a slab. But I mean he's he was this sort
of cool guy. You know, he's he's a successful television exec.
He really made his mark in sports with NBC. As
you probably know, he was responsible for at least three
Olympics games. I mean, he put NBC on the map
where sports are concerned, and that was that was really
his home base, having built that part of the NBC
television network. And I mean to that to this day
that that is a huge part of his Uh how
do how do I put it? You know, he he
he made his mark, he could do what he wants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that kind of guy.
Speaker 4: And so he shows up. I happened to be coming
back in the office from an appointment somewhere, and this
guy pulls in in this cherry red Porsche Targa that
you know just you know, tricked out to the max
and Dick gets a very tall guy and uh, you know,
I think I think that first time, you know, he
had some kind of funky loafers on it would be
that or cowboy boots and and he always had a
designer sweater, a bore, you know, hinos. He looked like
like uh cash dude and successful TV executive and I
mean there was there was nothing to complain about. The
guy was, you know, clean and slick, and that was that.
So we've had this first production meeting where where Dick
explaining what his vision is for putting shows together, and
Vince is sort of meeting him at every other comment
with with with his vision of how he sees the
wrestlers being portrayed, et cetera, et cetera. And the meeting,
it's a very small meeting. I think Nelson Schregler was there,
as I recall, who was head of TV programming for
Vince and Vince. Nelson was old school, he was I
think he had one sport jacket, this red bear navy
blazer and you always wore this one blazer and gray
trousers and we all joked he probably had a closet
full of sixteen blue blazers and sixteen bears a gray
slacks at all. And Nelson was a great guy, very
mild battered, you know, quiet, sort of sense of humor,
easygoing guy. And I was there, and Steve Taylor, the
WWF photographer who was quite often on the road. He
spent his life on the road. Basically, he was on
the in the office maybe a day a week, or
sometimes a day or two every two weeks when he
was going overseas and so forth with the boys. And
it was a really small grouping, and it was a
great meeting. And then just out of the blue, then
says to Dick, Dick, you may have noticed that my
staff is all in suit. Do this is because I
want to exude a very professional image. I'm sure you understand,
and I don't want to have any of my people
feel as though this is a constraint that I impose
on them only. And he said, listen, I'm just going
to ask you, would you mind if if you just
the next time we meet, and whenever you come to
our offices, you mind just at very least wearing a
tie jacket. And Steve and I looked at each other
and it was all we could do not to just
burst out laughing, like, Okay, Vince is just busting this
guy's balls. This cannot be real. Here's this accomplished TV
executive on top of the world. He's probably one of
a handful of the most valuable people that NBC has
in their ranks. And Vince is asking him to dress
up when he comes to the office, and we're like,
he could have kiddened me, and it did. Just he
did one of those things where his mouth was sort
of moving in slow motion but nothing was coming out,
you know, like he's processing this, and then it sort
of sputtered a little bit. Well, Vince, so well, I
know what should mean, and you could tell he was
just frothing around and something like are you kidding me? So,
But the long and the short of it is he
didn't really answered the question. He just said, well, we
have a lot on our players, so let's get you know,
we'll be in touch by people with her people and
all those things, and so Nelson was just Nelson didn't
say a word. Nelson's walking down the hall, he's.
Speaker 7: He's got that silly grin on his face and he's
just shaking his head like I can't believe it's did that,
and we're all hoping it didn't blow the deal, because
why would you need to even bring something up like that?
Speaker 4: You know, and but Steve and I we went down
to the coffee room when we're just howling like, Wow,
I can't I just I can't wait to see what
Dick comes back. Right, So the next time he comes,
he's in a full suit, wow, and no designer sweater.
He's wearing it high and then he kind of softened it.
And then from there it was like a sport code.
And then I think way down the road six eight
months later, if he came for meeting and at that
point people were going into New York more, that was
sort of the that was that was the opening salvo
when he came to see Vince. That was sort of like,
you know, the mountain going to Mohammed. So it was interesting.
But but he played the game. And you know, what
we took away from the whole thing was wrestling and
what Vince had to offer was so important and so
critical to their programming. He was willing to be, you know, politely,
pushed around a little and told what to wear. That
just blew our minds. That absolutely blew our minds. And
that Vince had you know, the gall the Scandinos asks
who's already accomplished to do something kind of weird like that,
you know, but that was Vince and he called the
shots and the guy did it. He dressed like he
asked him to do, so, you know, his his own
people wouldn't feel like they were being asked to dress
up for no good reason. It was a real interesting
sort of character study on you know, pushing the boundaries
with somebody to see what you can get away with.
It was just crazy and Vince, I don't know people
know this or not. I meant to say Dick. His
wife is Susan Saint James, Uh, the actress, and she
already had you know, she was a big deal in Hollywood.
She was the star of the villain and wife with
Rock Hudson. Uh. She was a star in her own right.
And you know, pretty almost immediately Vince and Linda and
Susan and Dick were pals and you know, going out
to dinner together and Vince it just sort of paved
his way into essentially, you know, the television world, Hollywood society.
Was just kind of fascinating to watch this happen in
real time with people that you know and work with.
It was it was just it was all very interesting.
Speaker 5: So anyway, very good Well, that's a that's a great
snapshot of the time period, and you have exactly as
you're saying, you have a a dialogue going on about
how to newly present these wrestlers with you know, Dick
Eversol's experience in television being kind of layered on top
of Vince's instincts, and Vince isn't afraid to uh to
draw distinctions around his level of power in the deal
and that continued to be a relationship that flourished for years. Well,
let's talk about how you first got in the door
over there, Brian. How did you become the WWFS creative director.
Speaker 4: Well, I started and it all started in probably the
most unlikely place on earth. Kip cod.
Speaker 5: Sure, that's where he was. That's where he started so
many of his enterprises.
Speaker 4: Well, it was really interesting. I'm I'm basically a graphic designer, illustrator,
a copywriter guy. And I started in ad agencies in
Boston when I was in my early twenties in the
early seventies, and you know, I had built up a
pretty decent clientele and worked my tail off and I
had a I found one thing and another there was
a printer I was doing a lot of work with
based in Hyennas, and I found an apartment I liked
in Yarmouth Port, this great little town on the on
the Bay side of the Cape. And for your listeners
who grew up in I've lived around Boston. WBCN was
probably one of the leading all rocks stations. Oh yeah,
classic rock in the sixties, late sixties, early seventies right
right through for some time after that. But I designed
that WWF logo. I mean, it's not what am I saying,
the WBCN logo. It's like a chrome kind of little treatment.
And that was on bumper stickers for ten years or more.
But that was one of my designs. And Christmas Tree
Shops logo, Boston Lobsters and Worldness was around, so I
had a good footprint. I couldn't establish my designer. And
I was this crazy, you know, twenty something guy running
around having fun and working my tailoff, but having plenty
of fun. And so one day I get this call.
I'm in my studio in the Armouth Port and a
woman named Linda McMahon calls and introduces herself. It's very
professional and she and her husband, Vince had just bought
the Cape Cod Coliseum out of receivership. The place had
struggled for years. It was about an eight thousand seat
venue and it had had rough times and they bought
it out cash, and she just told me a matter
of factly what the deal was. And they needed a logo,
and they'd found me in the Yellow Pages. You remember
those things that kids sat on when they couldn't fit
in their high chairs. Nobody used them for anything else
but that dad worked that I had in there. And
so they made an appointment to come by and chat
and see some of my works, all my portfolio, et cetera,
et cetera. So the day they came the door to
my it's sort of like Whener would come in the
door on Seinfeld. The door to my studio is buying,
and there's and and I'm just I just my jaw
sort of drop because it's a big guy. But he's
wearing a three piece pink plaid. Yes, I'm thinking, okay,
but this isn't like pinky lead. This isn't some slapstick.
It's obviously, you know, an Italian cut, nicely made suit.
It's a little bit loud, but you know, that's that's
what Vin's like to wear. So it was just kind
of crazy. And and you know on his heels is Linda,
and she's dressed to the nines, you know, very very gracious,
very elegant. And I mean you have to remember, you
can't get on the Cape if you're not wearing boat shoes.
And you know, you know, it's very casual polo shirt,
you know, shorts, and I think I was in jeans
and a T shirt or something. That's just a way
of life, you know. It's sort of like being somewhere
on a beach in Florida or something, and they just
they look like a million bucks, but they look like
they belonged at some gala in Boston or New York.
So it was it was just sort of out of context.
It was funny, and they looked at my work, they
liked my work. They hired me to do the logo,
and it was kind of nothing beyond that. And I
remember this is back in the mid I'd say, this
is like, I can't honestly recall I'm going to say
seventy six, seventy seven, somewhere in there is when bos
Gags was hot and his album Silk Degrees won a Grammy.
I mean, this guy was hot. He was a big deal.
So what has Vin? He gets Boz gags at this
at the cape Cod Coliseum, which has been you know,
the Loserville Railroad forever, and he turns this place around
instantly and gets the hottest guy you know in music
playing there. You know, you must have had a tour
date fall apart or something happened that was already booked
and they got him at the last minute. But all
of a sudden, he's got you know, a less bands
and performers in the cape Cod Coliseum all of a sudden,
it's a legit place. So he had the golden touch.
And I learned later that he actually had an interest
in the Worcester Centrum, So I mean he knew his
way around the event venue facility world, and I really
didn't know much about the wrestling. And we became friends.
We would go out for a drink and a cocktail,
which is another you know institution on Cape Cod. He
expected him morning, noon and night. No I'm kidding, but
not really. But I the fun thing Vince Vince used
to he just made going out for cocktails. Really. He
would call up and say it's time for a tall one. Yes,
he's really tall. Tumblers full of you know, typically vodka,
and we would just have a blast and he was
he was a funny guy. Linda was great. We just
had a great time and that was that. And you know, uh,
Actually a few years went by and I heard brumblings
about the wrestling and I didn't I really wasn't intimately
familiar with what all they were doing. And then I
started getting calls from both Linda and Vince and they said, look,
we're you know. The explained that Vince's dad had been
in the business for years, and it made me recall
when I was a kid. I actually was raised in California,
and I remember watching shows that originated at the Cow
Palace in San Francisco, and you know, the original Chic
and Haystack Calhoun. I mean, real old timers like that
who I was watching when I was seven or eight,
and it occurred to me, holy crap, Vince's dad put
those shows together. So it was like this weird string
of occurrences that had been going on forever that I
just knew of in a certain perspective as a kid,
and now I was realizing, wow, that this is becoming
a bigger deal, and so he was. He had this
vision for doing nationally broadcast shows where wrestling used to be.
Remember remember the old VHF in UHF TVF a schlumpy
little world that TV existed in. It had nothing to
do with what it's grown to or streaming or anything.
And not that Vincent defined all that it could be.
But he had this vision that it could be a
lot more than it was, and it was really fascinating.
And my biggest client was Infinity Broadcasting, which is a
radio company. It was the home of Howard Stern and
I did Stearn's promotion. That was my big ticket. And
I was doing that from the Cape, which was a
bit of a feat but I loved it and I
didn't feel I had to go anywhere. I had it made.
As far as I was concerned, I had a great gig.
I was my own boss. I'm on the Cape. I
had a good client, several clients, but that was the
big one. And they made these overtairs, We're going to
start doing shows out of Madison Square Garden. I'm like God,
and he said, listen, we wanted to be our creative director.
We wanted to you know, bring your vision for you know,
the look and the feel of the whole thing. And
it sounded fascinating. And at the same time, I'm thinking, yeah,
and I'm gonna I'm gonna be down somewhere around New York.
It's going to be more expensive, it's a little more formal.
It's I'm processing all this stuff in my head. I mean,
it's not like I ever left the Cape. I used
to go to New York City every two weeks on
puddle jumper out of Hyenas Airport down to you know,
La Guardia or one of the big three airports, depending
on what was available. And I would I would take
a taxi in town and had my meetings and come
back to the Cape. I was perfectly satisfied. And so
they're saying, yeah, well, this is a big deal, and
we're gonna we can't we can't work you know, at
arm's lengths. You're gonna have to be on premises. You're
gonna have to marry this thing. And like, I don't know,
and I mean this this wasn't a matter of conversations
in a matter of days or weeks. This one on
for two years. Because they were planning and they were.
They were starting to do shows out of out of
Madison Square Gardens and so MSG had become their their base,
but they hadn't built up a staff. They were they
were lining people up. They were just trying to strategize
how to do this thing and what to call it.
Titan Sports became the corporate name. And I mean before
I even left the Cape, I had worked on a
logo for Titan Sports, and I had done the original
ww F logo, which looked nothing like it did with
the you know, the the stacked w's with the F
growing out the right. That evolved to that, and it
was just a real but for literally two years, they
would call me maybe every month or two. Have you
thought about it? Have you thought about? Like? Ho? Come on?
And they kept upping the offer, and they thought, all right,
it's going to get to a certain point where I
got to be crazy not to do it. Because I
knew this thing was going to amount to something. I
just didn't know how big it was going to get
around fast. And they finally hit a number and I thought,
oh man, what am I doing? So I put my
house on the market, and you know, it was my
first house. I made a little bit of money. Okay,
I moved. I moved down to uh Greenwich. I mean
that this is like culture shock. This is like living
in a hut in Botswana and being transmitted to London.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: But what and the craziest thing. I got down to
Greenwich and it took I'm in a hotel. It took
me two months to find an affordable apartment. It's a
very expensive place. And you know, all all your corporate honchos,
all your all your heads of the biggest stock exchanges
and houses living places like Greenwich and neighboring suburbs in
New York just over the state line. It's you really
have to have some cake to play the game down there.
And I remember the first time I picked up some
dry cleaning. I mean it was like a shirt and
a pair of pants. It would have been like six
bucks on the cape. And I went to the dry cleaner,
I picked my stuff up. I said, I was just
sort of shooting the breeze with the guy for a
minute and I said, so what do I owe you?
And he said thirty dollars and I just burst that.
I really was laughing as that, you know, really what
a way owe you? And He just looked at me
like I was some rube that had been under a
rock for the last century, and he said thirty bucks,
like a idiot. I'm like okay, and I paid him.
And I remember like walking out with my clothes in
one of those you know, Dray cleaner bags. I'm like,
what did I just do? Oh my goodness, I think.
I mean this was real culture shock and nothing to
do with the wrestler. I mean, that's a whole other layer.
You know, you're in this very hoity toity place where
people tend to be more dressed up. You know, people
wear designer clothes. People are driving, you know, every other
car is a land Rover Mercedes for you know, Ferrari
the Lotus Way. You know.
Speaker 1: He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and Carno
and JP Sorrow. It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling Podcast.
Speaker 5: Well, you touched on design of the original w W
Flogobrian and I don't want to leave that unddressed because
that's obviously a point of fascination for pro fans. The
WWF logo that came into you know, general view during
your time. It's just the north Star when it comes
to like a look that everyone fell in love with.
As regards the WWF, you had said, it didn't quite
look that way in the beginning. So can you take
us through what it looked like at the very start
and how it came to be this chrome, shiny thing
that we all remember so well with the f off
to the right, as you mentioned, well, and you've.
Speaker 4: Got to realize this thing was such a process. I
had no inkling how how big and bold and successful
this thing was going to get so quickly, And it
really wasn't designed And from the little input that I
had got from Vince, this wasn't a logo that I
envisioned was necessarily going to be on screen on television,
something for consider to be looking at it. It was
a corporate logo, just some sort of signature to identify
the fact that, you know, when they were doing business,
correspondence back and forth to promoters, to you know, rent
venues and so forth, that kind of thing. And so
it was very simply a W, just just a right
reading W. You're looking at the W and above it,
let's say you're looking at a Let's say you're looking
at a compass. So the S the south is at
the bottom, and there's a west east and an end
for the north at the top. It was a W
going in four directions.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at it right now.
Speaker 4: It is.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating logo. I've never seen this one before.
Speaker 4: Where did you find it?
Speaker 6: I just googled it. I did a quick google of it,
and I did WWF logo. I just did nineteen seventies
and then this one came up. It's like fluorescent green.
Speaker 4: You've got to be kidding me, how come? Wow? Okay,
so but now think about this. Think of MetLife, the
insurance company, and they have an M that very similarly
those or directions like that, and the bottoms it's like
a in that instance, it's the the M is at
the top where the where the end for north would be.
So this, anyway, I never even thought about that when
I designed the logo. I just thought it was sort
of a fun graphic and it looked expansive, like it's
it's going in all directions at once. That was the idea.
It had this energy to do a three sixty whatever
that was. So Vince loves it. Okay, that's the logo.
The prince that puts it on letterheads that business cards.
That's about the of it. So he gets this letter
from an attorney for MetLife.
Speaker 2: Yes he does, and.
Speaker 4: The attorney accuses him of ripping off their logo blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and
Vince is just amused by the whole thing, and I'm
in my naivete I'm in terror because I'm thinking, oh
my god, they're going to sue me too, because I
designed the frickate thing, and you know, I had no
idea how these things worked at that point in my career,
I've gotten a lot more sophisticated business wise, but at
that point I was just struck terror in my heart.
And so I started doing some research on my own
and looking for precedents legal presidents that I happened to
have a friend who was a district attorney in Hyhennas
and legal beagle in them. He said, don't sweat at me,
and he gave me some legal finding. He found a
bunch of precedents where when a company, first of all,
you have to be in the same product area. So
so the WWF would have to be selling insurance for
met Life to have any kind of case at all,
which of course they weren't close to doing, and that
life close to making big, sweaty guys jump around and
beat each other up. So you know, there was no case.
But the CEO this is this is the craziest thing.
It turns out the CEO of MetLife, I can't even
remember the guy's name, turned out to be a closet
wrestling freak pro wrestling, so and that almost sort of
legitimized pro wrestling. And then Vince had a big smile
because yeah, everybody loves this stuff, they just don't admit it.
I mean, it was pretty cool. And what Vince did?
Speaker 2: Were you, Brian, were you a fan when growing up?
Did you watch wrestle?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's what I was talking about. When I
lived with the California as a kid, I watched wrestley
shows coming out of the Cow Palace and which people
may not if you're not familiar with the it's a
huge venue. The Cow Palace is like, h it's it's
a big deal and anyway, no, but what what what
really struck me was Vince didn't even want to spend
a dime on one of his attorneys. And believe me,
he had some powerhouse attorneys. But he didn't want to
waste the money, you know, indulging this guy. He wrote
a letter back to the chairman of MetLife on his
letter head and it was just it was a it
was a business lesson this this There should be a
Harvard Business School course enshrined on how to belittle somebody
in three paragraphs and bring them to their knees. And
it started off and dear so, and so it was
something to the effective as a fellow member of the
world business community.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's right.
Speaker 4: So we're already on the same place. And he was
basically saying, shut up and calm down and listen to me.
And he said, I you don't actually have grounds for this.
If you feel that our brand is somehow damaging yours
and we happen not to be in product areas that
have anything to do with each other, it's incumbent upon
you to pay me to change my logo. I'm perfectly
happy to do it. But the cost, because it now
is embedded in dozens of TV shows and hundreds of
hours of programming, the cost to design the new logo
and repro will be approximately one hundred thousand dollars so
guess what, he gets a check from that lot for
one hundred grand And did I get I got fifteen
hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: Counting that.
Speaker 4: Back then, that was a lot of money.
Speaker 2: To me, that was a lot of money.
Speaker 4: That's not an enormous amount for logo design in the
realm of things that I work at today, but you know,
that was a big deal back then. So I was
just happy as a clam. And you know, I and
I just got thinking, like, what are we going to
do differently here? And I started experimenting the w's and
I realized how they could stack. Yes, And you know,
you don't need to work too hard to put an
F next to it. You could just grow a couple
of lines out and you've got the semblance of an F.
And I and I started playing with it, and interestingly too,
this this, you know, for that logo and for WrestleMania.
This era that we live in now, you know, kids
are learning how to do photoshop in school. It's a given.
It's just another app. And you know, but back in
that era, photoshop in its infancy wasn't around until the
mid nineties. Everything was done traditional airbrush. I'm not an illustrator,
but I would. I would pencil my designs very very tightly.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 4: I was absolutely a stickler about details, and I had
some great airbrush artists that I would then sub contract
to to do that end of it. And then I
would do what it's called dry brush technique, which is
detailing on top of the airbrush layer for highlights and
so forth. And that's how these logos came to be.
And you know, the basic ww IF logo just for
lighterhead and stuff was just a black image. But then
when I when I realized the mag that you to,
what this thing was becoming, and that it was going
to be on screen, and that it had to be
you know, hot and sexy and compete with everything else
on TV, I'd thrown out the possibility to Benson Linda,
that you know, hey, let's do this in full color,
let's let's make it look rich, let's give it a
metallic kind of really funky feel. And then you know,
the answer was then and always was do it. And
that's how it got where it got.
Speaker 5: Wow, that is such critical history to know because that
logo just centers us. Like I said, and yeah, that
original four points logo, I know, I've seen it on
WWF television before I kind of associated with the time
when they were like more of the seventies. But I
suppose maybe it was just super imposed on footage from
the seventies that they later released. But yeah, that's not
a logo, Brian. That's completely unfamiliar to wrestling fans. It's
harder to find, but it's out there, and wow, that's
how we got to the WWF logo. We all need
just one more question on that logo before we move on.
Is it supposed to evote kind of like a horizon
in the desert or something. I was that middle line
beneath kind of has like a brownish, almost like sand
color in the top is like a sky blue. I've
always wondered if I'm just seeing things when I look
at the logo, if that's what you intended.
Speaker 4: No, Actually, I'll tell you something funny. I I grew
up loving hot rods. I mean, but when the kid
done and I grew up, well, my folks flow up
when I was barely a teenager and I came kicking
and screaming back to these coast But the you know,
I remember watching these insanely hot This is the era
of big Daddy at Roth and you know, car magazines
raised rein supreme with the you know, just just crazy
chroned mountains of it engines. And when you when you
look at any kind of chrome typography, you know, like
the or the logo for the Dodge Ram or a
hubcap on a low rider, you quite often see earth
tones or grays which are reflection of the asphalt of
the road, and then you see a soft blue that's
the sky. It's just that simple. You're reflecting whatever is
around the chrome in the peripheral vision from from maybe
you see a little hint of green. You're picking up
the bushes and the trees at the street level. It's
just it's just a stylized reflection of whatever colors are
picked up in reflection in the chrome, whether it's a
bumper or a hubcap, whatever, and that's it. It was
just simply a matter of making contrast to make it
look interesting and too so when the high lights appear,
they look even brighter, shinier. You know, there's not a
lot of science to it. It was just really just
a stylization of you know, somebody went to a metal
working shop and had that logo built in three d
mounted on the side of a building and cars are
going by, and you know there's a flower bed somewhere by.
You're gonna see hints of brown from the dirt and
the flower bed. Way. It's that simple that it's just
how how chrome sort of abstractly reflects light and color
around it.
Speaker 5: So right, it's not a it's not necessarily depiction of
a landscape. It's a reflection of something bouncing off the logo,
like it in a chrome tailpipe or something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, really cool. Going back to the WBCN logo
that I originally did in the mid seventies, that that
in part was my inspiration for the finish on the
on the on the w w F logo and and
and you know, the the the WrestleMania logo had some
aspects of that. It was a little cleaner, a little brighter,
and and the concept for that was that was going
to be the big show. And so that it became
even more almost you know, gold and diamond like, if
you will. It wanted to just be really you know, bright, showy.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: Well, let's pick up that thread there. I mean, you know,
what are some of your more memorable moments with the
w w F. I'd imagine the build up to WrestleMania
was no small part of it.
Speaker 4: Wow, well, I'll tell you are are you interested at all?
And knowing how the the name WrestleMania came about?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's the perject of extensive lore And we
all know how it. Ankle gets the credit in the
the official WWF cannon as far as like the corporate history,
but we also know that there's others that you can
assign that credit to.
Speaker 4: So please, well, I haven't heard anyone else's signed with it,
and I knew how, and I really liked how he was.
He was just one of those really authentic people. You know.
He went out of his way, absolutely out of his
way to be as nice as he could be to people.
And there there were a few, say, in any office anywhere,
there are a few people that you know, let their
bad morning, grumpy day hang with them through the day.
And they weren't, you know, they didn't know how to
keep a chin up around others. And how he was
that kind of guy wherever he was, even if he
weren't a great mood, he can go with, hey, how
you doing, and you just light up a room when
he came in. He was that kind of guy, and
I don't honestly think and he claimed credit for it.
Speaker 2: I think he was.
Speaker 4: It was attributed to him. But what really happened, you know,
based basically in the late fall of eighty four, Vince
just put the feelers out the department as I was,
I was head of you know, loosely creative and production,
if you want to call it that, And there was
a there was a very closely associated guy named Tom Emmanuel,
a British guy who ran the publishing. Although I designed
the w W magazine and oversaw the art end of it,
Tom was the publisher of it. So we all worked
together in different capacities on some of the same things.
And Vince maybe these rumbleys. He wanted to have a huge,
huge event that would be pay per view, and even
the ter everyone was like what and you know, this
was like the infancy of what we now call on demand.
But Vince had been talking to people at ESPN and
this is actually, you know, at least a year or so,
I think a year and a half or more before
Dick Eversol came into the fold, and Vince had been
doing his homework on a technology that was loosely being
called pay per view, and people were still trying to
work out how the heck it was going to work,
et cetera, et cetera. But he decided that he wanted
to just do this massive event, a big live event
at MSG, but it would be broadcast via satellite and
people who have the ability to get into their homes,
which was next to nobody could watch it. But most
people were going to sports bars or what have you
to watch it on a big screen with a bunch
of other people. And so he just wanted to start
kicking around names. So he called a couple of staff
meetings with department heads so that that would be That
would be Tom myself, promoters like Basil DeVito and Cohen
Nelson Schwegler, who was head of TV. Steve I can't
honestly remember Steve was in all the meeting. He was
one of them because he was usually on the road,
Steve Taylor, the photographer, and but but what we we'd
have these meetings and it was like a typical meeting,
and everybody's got an idea, it's bouncing all over the place.
And how many of us have been in a meeting
or something actually got done right, you know, you mean, well,
and everybody throws in their two cents, but you usually
wind up needing to schedule another meeting or meetings upon meetings,
and yeah, that's why people hate meetings. So anyway, what
was going going on was what was good about it
was that it prompted everybody'd be walking around thinking, you know,
was they're doing other things and they're sitting at their
desks or you know, on the phone with somebody droning
on about something. They're really thinking, Okay, what are we
gonna call us thing? So it prompted everybody to have it,
you know, in the forefront of their minds, to try
to come up with something. And there was this guy
and I have tried desperately since we talked about doing this,
uh this podcast. You know, this guy came to mind
and a life of me cannot remember his last name.
He wasn't with the WWF all that long. He had
come in in the fall of eighty four. He was
only there about a year and a half. Really a
short guy. He looked a little like Bobby Riggs, the
tennis pro that the Billy Jean King in that era.
He was he was kind of gruff. He was this
chain spoken guy, and he seems the part of a character,
kind of kind of crusty. I like the guy, and
he was a funny little guy. And Steve and I
were in the coffee room and Rex wandered in and
he was musing to himself about something under his breath.
He said, what do you guys, what do you think
of WrestleMania? Wow? Wow? And I don't know if Steve
recalls this or not, he may think I'm out of
my mind, but I have a very distinct memory of this.
And we just looked at each other like yeah, and
he just said, well, you know, it's basically the Beatlemania
with wrestling. Its kind of beatle I mean, and it
was so obvious, it was so perfect because when you
think about it, what's really interesting to me, I was,
I don't know, thirteen twelve thirteen, when the Beatles first
came on the scene. I mean, that was that was epic.
That was no one had ever ever heard anything like that,
in the same way that prior to Elvis, no one
had ever heard anything like Elvis. You can't say that
about even Belie, about Michael Jackson. There's there's been big
icons that happened to be a songwriter, a musician that is,
that is my passion and music, live and breathe music.
I think about it all the time. And el Elvis
was iconic in the in the sense that he did
something no one had even imagined before. Now now, you know,
obviously he emulated blues artists and and and you know
bit players in the formation of R and B who
will never get the credit they're due. But and like kind,
you know, the Beatles were influenced by R and B players,
and you know they but they came about it in
an entirely different way. And when they appear, beatle Mania
was really the only thing you could call it. People
people were showing up by the thousands of airports to
greet them when they were on tour. Now, what's the
last time that happened. Well, I'll tell you the last time.
I know what happened. And you may not be that surprised.
When the WWF guys tour in Arabic nations, in Saudi Arabia, Qatar,
places like that, people show up at the airport. Wow.
And in Japan and not so much now, but I
mean in the in the big blow up in the eighties.
That is how hot this thing was. And I just
thought how fitting that that just sort of grabs that
energy and that describes that that chill you get up
your back like whoa. And I think what happened was,
you know, Rex was very kind of like under himself
kind of guy. He was involved in TV production. I
think I think he had been at CNN prior to that.
He was somewhere in the in the TV biz. And
I've tried to google what his last name might have been,
and I've various different Rexes, and there's Rex Jones, of course,
and there's a couple of name name value wrestlers who
for his name was Rex. This guy was not a wrestler,
very diminutive guy, but very nice guy.
Speaker 5: But it sounds to me, if I can interrupt Brian
with the glasses and the diminutive and the Atlanta connections,
it sounds like you're describing Jim Barnett. Oh okay, you
know Jimmy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Jim was a crazy man. Oh my god.
Speaker 5: Well, I hate to derail you, but we got to
take a quick pit stop for jim Z. I mean
the subject of endless fascination for wrestling fans. He came
to work for Vincent eighty three and the ultimate mover
and shaker. Can you quickly give us a memory on
Jim Barnett That sounds like a yes.
Speaker 4: Oh, Jim Barnett was an Elton John of his own era.
This guy, well, you know he was, he was. He
was just an institution. I don't even know how to
really character Brian, Yes a moment. Yes, I mean, he
was just such a character. Oh my gosh. It's just
like he strode off a plantation with a mint julip
in his hands. He said, the only thing that guy
drank was Don Peranelle. He had a refrigerator in his
office and Linda would go down there every once in
a while and you know, tip a glass with him
and just shoot the breeze, and you know, there, she's
a Southern bell. Jim was clearly from the South. Jim
never left the South. He just brought the South with him.
He had, Honest to god, what was he had? He
had more silk ties than Liberaci and he was just
a character. I don't know where, but somewhere in Manhattan
he had an apartment, and I think he had a
place he stayed out in Connecticut when he was at
the office. But but he was. He was an old
school wrestling promoter who was had worked with Vince's dad
way back, and and he oh my gosh, what a character.
He was just one of the funniest people I've ever met.
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: Well, somebody else that was in the company at the
time to pick up your threat on who this Rex
could have been. Do you remember Bob McMullen, who worked
as VP of finance.
Speaker 4: That's a boy. I was one of his favorite people.
I used to bring bills you couldn't.
Speaker 5: Imagine, So I guess you remember him perhaps from pleasant
and unpleasant interactions as regards the bottom line.
Speaker 4: Very pleasant, But I mean I was in charge of
procuring all kinds of gear and and uh outfitting for
for the wrestlers from time to time.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I found this equestrian shop that made saddles and
stuff for you know, people who do dressage and you know,
fancy horse racing. And I said, can you guys make
wrestling belts? Can you can you make a gladiator outfit
for one of our dresslers? And they were just having
a stuff. So I would bring him bills from this
equestrian shop, and what do we why do we feeding horses?
I said, But but the craziest thing, the craziest thing.
One time I had ted d Biassi, the million dollar
man in Virgil, come into the offices and they had
a limo to shuttle them around and then take them
back to the airport because they were this is like
one stop off the road between gigs at you know,
different venues, and the limo driver left. He didn't he
didn't understand the itinerary or something, and they were kind
of stranded. But they needed to get fitted for costumes,
and I wanted this equestrium shop to do some of
the outfitting for for the million dollar man's you know,
costuming for the ring and uh at the at the time,
at the time, I had a little BMW convertible and
it was a great car until that happened. And I
got two guys that are just shy of eight hundred
pounds between the two of them, and it's like I
got a low rider. I mean, it's just crazy. I said,
do you guys want to put the top and you
want me to put the top up, so you know,
you're not like having a wave in every jimoke that
comes along, and they I'll leave it down. It's great.
It was a beautiful day. So we had to drive
up to Westport, which is, yeah, you know, with with
no traffic, twenty minutes but typically forty minutes from Greenwich.
And so we drive up to Westport and I did
part of a ninety five and the back of my
cars dragging, I mean, is just like you got to
be kidding me, you know, we're just all laughing, but
I'm thinking they're not going to believe this in the
office when I hand him a bill, because my shocks
are blown to shreds. So we did what we had
to do at the equestrian shop, and we came back
and they scheduled another limo, went to the airport and
they're gone. But my car was just I was just groaning.
I could hear it out in the park. Who help me.
I went down to McMullen's office and I said, oh,
this is this is one for the books. I need
new shocks. He said why you well, and you know
paying for your repairing your car? He said, yeah, because
a million dollar man in Virgil flattened it. Oh, and
he just laughed and he said, just go get him fixed,
get me a bill. I mean it was I always,
I wasn't the only one. There were just so many
crazy things. And in this era before long before photoshop,
the only way to electronically alter photographs and so forth.
It's very expensive. It was a system called a cy
Tex system, and it was like a roomful of mainframe computers,
and it was cheap. It was one hundred and fifty
bucks an hour. But Vincent insisted. At one point we
had this great shot of Hulk, but his hair was stinning,
and and you know, some of the guys very vain.
They do hair plugs whatever, but you know, painful operations.
I think there's better solutions now, but that was the
state of the art medically back then. The Vincent we
don't have time. Just give him more hair. Oh my god,
you're not gonna want to see the billy, so just
do it. Wow, what Hulk's got all the hair in
the world.
Speaker 5: Because we always talk about O'Brian, you know, there seems
to be like a message to shoot Hulk as far
as camera angles and stuff, to always shoot him kind
of down looking up, so you don't ever see really
the top of his head. I mean, you don't see
the top of wrestler's heads too much anyway, but it's
very noticeable. I think when you when you come to
learn that there was that sensitivity about him getting bald.
Speaker 4: Well. I remember, I remember there was one time that
Linda came in my office with a stack of bills
in her hand. She said, what's side text. I said,
it's a whole other money in, you know. I mean,
it's that's the only way we could get certain things done.
And it was crazy.
Speaker 5: So I mentioned Bob McMullen just because there was a
book that came out by friend of the show, Brad Blucian,
called The six Pack last year, and he kind of,
you know, finds all kinds of people from this era
and interviews them about what the real formation of the
boom period WWF was like. And he interviews Bob McMullen,
and sure enough, Bob McMullen contends that it was in
fact Rex Jones. He says, Jones, who was brought in
a television guy. Linda brought us in Vince's office. We're
trying to think about how to do it. We're talking
about mania. So Rex sits there and says it's got
to be WrestleMania rhymes with Hulk of Mania. So is
it Rex Jones. You seem to be not sure if
it's Rex Jones, but Bob seems to think it is.
Speaker 4: Well, I thought of Rex Jones that has something to
do with wrestling online, and it didn't look remotely like
the guy I remember whose first name was Rex.
Speaker 2: Got it?
Speaker 5: Okay, Yeah, I did a similar surgeon. I'm not sure
that all the pictures that come up as actually the
person that worked for WWF. I think there might be
some confusion there too.
Speaker 4: I don't doubt. I don't doubt that are Rex Jones.
It just wasn't in the in the area of things
that I worked on, and I don't recall it. But
what I'm saying is the guy that I remember, I
remember physically distinctly, and I found Rex Jones online because
I remember you had mentioned that when we spoke before,
and that was a totally different guy. They had dark hair,
just different look whatsoever. But you didn't have the horn
room glasses, and just Rex was was very distinctive right
the way. Just for the life of me, can't remember
the guys last name.
Speaker 5: That's that's fair. I just wanted to see if that
that sharpened the memory at all. So you were you
were on the track of saying that what you think
happened is that The reason it's the square I ascribed
to Howard is because perhaps Rex told Howard and then
everyone heard it first from Howard after that.
Speaker 4: That that was my feeling. Well, I mean, you know, basically,
Howard was just sort of bouncing around the halls WrestleMania, WrestleMania, WrestleMania,
and I felt like he had just gone in and
said to them too, and he goes yeah, Vince goes, yeah,
that's it. That's probably what happened, and everyone just said
how must have thought that up, and and not to
take away from how he won IOTA or anything. I
just I honestly think the first utterance of it was
what Steve and I heard. However, that got communicated to
to Howie or with an airshot of Howie, and how
he lit up on it and wanted to share it
with Vince, which is very typical of Howard. So it
doesn't matter who came up with it. It was just
a great name. But I just thought it was very interesting. However,
it came about that was my reckoning of it, that's all.
Speaker 5: And we do want to let everybody in the lapsed
fan solar system know that Brian will be at gamer
Con Connecticut coming up soon at the Mohican Sun Casino
March fifteenth and sixteenth. He'll have his own booth an
artist's alley at the show. He'll have signed and numbered
prints of the WrestleMania logo, among other things he worked
on available, So you really want to stop by if
you're in the area and say hi to Brian because
he's a friend of the show now too. So just
go online to ctgamercon dot com ct for Connecticut for
more information on the venue and the event, and we
look forward to seeing listeners of the podcast at the event. Well,
the table has been set wonderfully by former WWF creative
director Brian Penry here in the first part of our
conversation getting us acquainted with how he became acquainted with
the McMahons and then later climbed the organization as it
grew so fast, designing the WWF logo, the WrestleMania logo.
There's more I imagine to digging in new there and
part two of our conversations so keep your eyes peeled
and your earspeeled to our feed here as we present
part two of our conversation with Brian Penry in his
time in the World Wrestling Federation. We'll see you then.
ISIL what is a production of the Lab Entertainment Group.
Speaker 2: Its content is intended for private use only.