It was at this juncture that, according to Stollman, steps were taken by the establishment to shut ESP-Disk down. "In 1968 Warner Brothers offered to buy the label and I said no, and not long after that the pressing plant we were using began bootlegging our own albums and selling them to distributors without our knowledge," he asserts. "It wasn't until 1974 that federal laws against bootlegging were enacted. It ended up putting us out of business, and I believe it was done by the Johnson regime to silence our criticism of the war." Stollman married soon after and moved full-time with his wife to a farm they purchased near Woodstock, occasionally releasing the odd folk or hippie-rock LP and, infamously, an album of 1960s recordings by mass murderer Charles Manson (Charles Manson Sings, 1974). "ESP exists to document music and art, and I found Manson's music interesting," he says. "Maybe you can compare it to Alfred A. Knopf, the Jewish publisher who published Hitler's Mein Kampf in America." By 1975, ESP had effectively been wound down, and in 1979 Stollman became a staff lawyer with the New York State Department of Transportation. He eventually became an assistant state attorney general and retired in 1991.
There have been criticisms of Stollman from some of ESP's former rock artists, who complain about unpaid royalties. "It was never my intention to run ESP as a business, it was always about the music itself," says Stollman, now 85 and subsisting on a state pension. "Some of the records in the 1960s did sell a little, but never enough to make back what I put into making them."
ESP's back catalog was licensed twice by European labels before Stollman, who today lives alone in a small Hudson apartment, decided to resume control of the label in 2005, reissuing digitally and on CD all 115 original titles and producing select contemporary acts. One such signing is Maine psychedelic folk duo Arborea, whose Fortress of the Sun appeared last year. "I'd known about ESP-Disk for quite a while beforehand, and was familiar with their amazing catalog," says the band's Buck Curran. "Ornette Coleman's Town Hall, 1962 is one of my absolute favorite albums. We're a good fit on the label, with the 'free' aspect of our artistic creativity and the fact that ESP has always pushed boundaries. It feels very special to be a part of that vibrant musical legacy."
"When I started ESP I looked at what the major labels were doing and I was aghast—the music was their last consideration. So I decided to break every rule they had," says Stollman, a mischievous flicker in his still-vibrant, pastel-blue eyes. "My main concern with the artists I work with is 'Are they saying something, and can I hear what they're saying?'"
An expanded 50th anniversary edition of the Albert Ayler Trio's Spiritual Unity, which includes an unheard bonus track, is out now. Espdisk.com.
