A&R and Production Work
LaRocka's first stab at production was with Irish band Silent Running, whom he signed while working in the A&R department at Atlantic Records. He also played drums on their album Deep. He began working for Sony Music and one of his first signings was the Spin Doctors. He produced their 1991 debut Pocketful of Kryptonite. The album sold slowly at first but it eventually became a hit after their song Little Miss Can't Be Wrong started picking up airplay on MTV and radio. The follow-up single Two Princes was a top ten hit and the album reached a peak of #3 on the Billboard charts in 1993. LaRocka produced subsequent albums for the Spin Doctors but they failed to achieve the same success.
He produced the soundtrack for the 1993 movie Philadelphia. It reached #12 on the Billboard 200 album chart and featured a top ten single hit in the Bruce Springsteen song Streets of Philadelphia. Springsteen also won an Academy Award for Best Song as well as a Golden Globe. Neil Young was also nominated for an Academy Award for his track Philadelphia and the album also featured tracks by Peter Gabriel and the Spin Doctors.
By the end of his career at Sony, LaRocka was vice president of the A&R department. He was back playing drums for a New York band Hot Monkey Love and with Noel Redding on a 2002 live album recorded at Prague. He also had an independent production company, Straight Line Productions, and had signed the band happyendings to J Records where they were recording their debut record.
LaRocka died after undergoing heart surgery in New York in May 2005.
Read more about this topic: Frankie LaRocka
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