Eric Greif

Eric Greif is a lawyer and entertainment personality known first for a management career within the heavy metal musical genre in the 1980s and later within the legal profession. Greif's most notable clients were Motley Crue in their early career and later Chuck Schuldiner, inspiration behind the death metal sub-genre, and his band Death. Both relationships ended in well-known lawsuits. In recent years Greif co-wrote a text on offshore taxation, Choosing an Offshore: Cybertax in the New Millennium, with lawyer Michael Grosh.

Entertainment Career

At 18, Greif studied at Hollywood's University of Sound Arts with mentor Ron Fair. At 19, Greif was the assistant manager of Los Angeles hard rock act Motley Crue, being introduced to band manager Allan Coffman by friend and musician Greg Leon, who had formerly played with drummer Tommy Lee. Greif organized the group's infamous Canadian tour of June 1982, which included their arrest at Edmonton International Airport for wearing dangerous spiked stage gear on the plane, as well as orchestrating a spurious bomb threat against the band that made national headlines in a PR coup. When the band left Coffman the following year for new management, Greif sued all parties in Los Angeles Superior Court and the suit lasted several years.

In the mid-80s, Greif used his contacts with Greenworld Distribution, who had been responsible for the marketing of the first Crue album Too Fast For Love, to release several American heavy metal acts that he was both producing and managing, including Kansas City's Vyper. Greenworld's bankruptcy in 1987 was one of several controversial clouds that followed Greif's career and made him both an admired and detested figure within the genre, much of it due to the cult of personality surrounding him and the result of allegations of inflated ego, something he himself admitted in several newspaper and fanzine articles.

By 1988, Greif was found within the heavier death metal sub-genre, co-promoting the annual Milwaukee Metalfest, arranging concert tours of Mexico by international genre acts, and managing sub-genre founder Chuck Schuldiner and his Florida act Death. Schuldiner fired Greif after working together over the course of two albums, but re-hired him as an out of court settlement after Greif took legal action. Two years later, the pair parted ways again amid allegations of breach of contract against Greif, resulting in suit and counter-suit settled mutually in 1995. During this period, Greif produced several minor releases within the genre, including Morbid Saint, Invocator, Acrophet and Jackal.

More recent work within the industry has been on the legal side, focusing on contracts and IP, as well as guiding the careers of Los Angeles band Æon Spoke, featuring former Death guitarist Paul Masvidal, and London's Sugarmonkey.

Legal Career

Greif went to university in the 90s and became a lawyer. Co-wrote Choosing an Offshore: Cybertax in the New Millennium with fellow U of C Faculty of Law alumnus Michael Grosh, a book considered a standard within the area of international offshore taxation.

Based in Britain, Greif also advocated the restorative justice movement within criminal justice, and in 2003 was sent by the UK Government to train the Czech Probation Service in victim-offender mediation, as part of an EU expansion project.

A juvenile diabetic, Greif fought blindness and kidney failure and had multiple surgeries. An opponent of hard drugs throughout his career, he was also known for joking about his own diabetic needle use.

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Entertainment Career

Legal Career

See also