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For many artists, employing a parent as manager simply boils down to the issue of trust ...
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Having your parent manage you carries some heavy risks, a child psychologist warns ...
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Believe it or not, people have told Beyoncé's father, 'I think your daughter sucks' ...
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Most parents don't know how to manage, dawg, 'American Idol' judge Randy Jackson says ...
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As hard as it is, being able to separate personalities — the artist from the child — seems to be the key to making the parent-manager relationship work.
"I have to be really, really understanding because sometimes Usher can say things that are less than pleasing to me, but I have to put on that other hat and realize that this is not my son speaking to me, this is the artist," Patton said. "I can separate the two. I understand that I make mistakes. I'm a manager, so I have to take a hit when I do something that's not pleasing to him. Sometimes it's difficult, but we work through it."
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"My dad and I, we'll go head-to-head and fight." —Ashlee Simpson (pictured with dad Joe)
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"My dad and I, we'll go head-to-head and fight," Ashlee Simpson said about her father, Joe Simpson, who also manages Jessica. "Me and my dad are very strong-minded and what we say is how we feel and we're not going left or right of it, but two seconds later after a fight, I'm like, 'Daddy, I love you! I'm so sorry!' because we love each other at the end of the day. And I know even if I want to fight him for something, I know that he's not out to get me."
Mathew Knowles learned the importance of differentiating between business and family actions while running a hair salon with his wife in Houston, where several family members held jobs. "I've had to fire my first cousin, I've had to terminate people very close to us and make those tough business decisions," he said. "I've just been given that gift to be able to separate the business from personal."
Beyoncé said that's the reason their relationship has worked so well on both fronts.
"I know when I'm talking to my father it's a different person than when I'm talking to my manager," she said. "We go at it big time, you would be very surprised. But when he's my father, I respect him like he's my father and he respects me like his daughter. And I still respect him as a manager, but it's a completely different thing."
Beyoncé, holed up in a Beverly Hills hotel to promote the new Destiny's Child album, paused to collect her thoughts. "It's a difficult thing to be able to cut the two apart, but it's really necessary, otherwise I don't see how it would work," she continued. "It's also harder when they start off managing you young because there is this transition when you become an adult and sometimes it's hard for them to let go ... but when I turned 18 ... I think he understood that."
Like most parent managers, Mathew Knowles never intended to work for his daughters. He was a sales manager for Xerox when the original incarnation of Destiny's Child made it to "Star Search" and lost.
"Seeing your daughter cry, I didn't want her or the rest of the ladies to give up on their dream, and so that's when I stepped in," Mathew recalled in between meetings at his Los Angeles office, where he now runs a company that manages dozens of acts, including Nelly, Mary J. Blige and Jadakiss. "I asked the producer of the show what I could do and he said most people go back and rededicate and make changes to their organization, and that's when I started pursuing the management."
Knowles enrolled in music-business classes at Houston Community College and took over every aspect of Destiny's Child.
"I had to be the front sound man, I had to be the security, I had to be the road manager, I had to wear all of those hats, and so it allowed me to really understand almost every aspect of the day-to-day," he said. "I also used a lot of the business savvy that I had learned at Xerox, and that was understanding the customer and knowing how to work inside of a major company. I find that a lot of new managers don't have that attribute of dealing with the different departments in a record label and building this energy."
Through working in the rough and tough sales world, Mathew also learned to hide his emotions.
"If you wear your emotions on your sleeve, you can never do this job, because a lot of people have opinions in the music industry," he said. "If somebody came up to me and said, 'You know, I think Beyoncé sucks.' I'm not going to get emotional about that, because that's their opinion and I have to maybe continue a business dialogue with them. Certainly I would want to understand, 'Why do you feel that way?' But then there's some parents that would get very emotional if someone said, 'Your kid sucks.' "
For his first few years, Mathew never told anyone he was Beyoncé's father. "I wanted them to accept me as a manager," he said.
He was exposed on a national level, however, when two of Destiny's Child's original members (who were kicked out when they tried to hire a new manager) sued him for putting his daughter's interests first. The lawsuit, which was settled out of court, also accused Mathew of "greed and desire for control" — allegations he vehemently denied.
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Photo: Getty Images
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