Danny Fields

**Danny Fields** (born *Daniel Feinberg* on 1939-11-13) grew up in a Jewish family in Richmond Hill, Queens, and displayed a precocious love for literature and music that earned him a Phi Beta Kappa honor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1959. *After a brief stint at Harvard Law School*, he abandoned the legal path, moved to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 1960, and briefly enrolled at NYU before immersing himself in the burgeoning downtown arts scene. He worked for eclectic publications such as *Liquor Store* and *Outdoor Advertiser*, and by 1966 he was Managing Editor of the teen‑fan magazine **Datebook**, famously spotlighting John Lennon’s “more popular than Jesus” controversy. Frequenting Max’s Kansas City, Fields rubbed shoulders with Andy Warhol’s Factory crew, even sharing a loft with actress Edie Sedgwick, and later authored liner notes for the Velvet Underground’s *Live at Max’s Kansas City* before its posthumous release in 1972.

Fields’ influence exploded when he became a publicist for Elektra Records, promoting The Doors despite a personal rivalry with Jim Morrison, and recommending the label sign future punk pioneers the MC5 and The Stooges after a 1968 trip to Detroit. In 1975 he discovered the Ramones at CBGB, co‑managed them, and helped secure a Sire Records deal that propelled their three seminal albums *Ramones*, *Leave Home*, and *Rocket to Russia*; the 1980 Ramones record *End of the Century* even featured the tribute track “Danny Says,” later covered by the Foo Fighters and Tom Waits. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he managed artists like Paleface and co‑authored biographies of Cyrinda Foxe and Linda McCartney, while remaining openly gay—an early example of LGBTQ representation in the music business. Today he lives in New York City, continues to mentor new acts such as the East London punk band False Heads, and is the subject of the documentary *Danny Says* which premiered at SXSW in 2015.