‘Private Parts’ Album Due Feb. 25, Is Full Of Author Stern’s Favorites

The self-proclaimed “king of all media” is primed to conquer another realm: music.

Howard Stern, who has had tremendous success in radio, books and television, attacks record racks this month with the Warner Bros. release of the soundtrack to “Private Parts.” The film, which opens March 7, is based on Stern’s best-selling autobiography of the same name.

The “Private Parts” album, due Feb. 25, will contain a mix of classic and modern rock, including Porno For Pyros’ “Hard Charger,” the first single. The track is being hailed as a Jane’s Addiction reunion, teaming Pyros Perry Farrell and Stephen Perkins with fellow former Addiction bandmate Dave Navarro and his current Red Hot Chili Peppers bandmate, Flea.

The disc will also include movie dialogue and additional exclusive Stern material (including a track on which he sings lead vocals). The release will piggyback not only on the already massive Stern-generated advance promotion of the film via his nationally syndicated daily radio show, but also on his powerful multimedia track record.

“Let me give you some superlatives,” says Jeff Gold, Warner Bros. executive vice president. “‘Private Parts’ was the fastest-selling autobiography in the history of book publishing, and its follow-up, ‘Miss America,’ was the fastestselling book, period.

“His nightly show on E! Entertainment (a half-hour taped segment of his radio show) is the No. 1 show on the network, and everywhere he goes with his radio show he’s incredibly successful,” Gold continues. “So he really is the ‘king of all media’ - like he always says - and I think the ‘Private Parts’ album will do phenomenally well.”

Moreover, the soundtrack to the movie is “obviously much closer to what Howard does - and to his fan base,” adds Gold, who is executive producer of the album along with Peter Afterman and Rick Rubin. “The fan base is into music and music is a big part of Howard’s show every day.”

It has become an even bigger part since November, when the show moved into a new, band-friendly studio, which is four times the size of Stern’s former home base and features state-of-the-art technology. Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, Cheap Trick and White Zombie are among the many acts that have already played there live on-air.

“No matter what we’ve done, the thing most people mention is having heard us on Stern,” says White Zombie’s Rob Zombie.

Love him or hate him, Stern has always taken great care in creating his commercial products - and promotes them endlessly from his home station, WXRK New York.

His total involvement in his movie soundtrack album, which Rubin produced, is “sort of a fantasy realized,” Stern says. The tune selection, he says, is a “treasure chest of great songs, half classic and half new,” covering the 20 years of his career that the movie spans.

The track listing was still in the final planning stages at press time. But in addition to “Hard Charger,” it will definitely include Cheap Trick’s “I Want You To Want Me”; Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water”; AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” in a previously unreleased live version that the band will be seen lip-syncing to in the movie; Green Day’s cover of the Kinks’ “Tired Of Waiting For You”; an as-yet-untitled collaboration between Stern (singing background vocals) and Rob Zombie; Marilyn Manson’s “The Suck”; LL Cool J’s “My Own Rule,” featuring members of Red Hot Chili Peppers; Ozzy Osbourne and Type O Negative’s cover of Status Quo’s “Pictures Of Matchstick Men”; and Stern’s own “Tortured Man,” which was produced by the Dust Brothers and co-written by them, Stern, and his radio sidekicks, Jackie Martling and Fred Norris.

Stern says that samples of his old air checks - “all my bad radio shows from early on” - will also be mixed into the soundtrack album. Vintage bits of his father Ben Stern’s singing and his own recordings made as a child in his father’s studio will also be incorporated and will be available exclusively on the album.

“I tried to be open-minded when putting the soundtrack together,” adds Stern. “Obviously, I’m a big Porno For Pyros fan and (a fan of) White Zombie and Marilyn Manson and Ozzie and the other artists. Some of the classic tunes are tunes I’ve played on the radio - and I took a couple of great ones.

“But I love new music,” Stern continues. “Even when the station I’m on (in New York) was classic rock, I wasn’t really high on it. I’m just so turned on by today’s music - which is better than the (stuff) I grew up with! It’s so creative right now, with so many good bands like the ones who are cooperating with the album. So it’s going to be a fun album, and the music complements the movie. I’m really thrilled.”

Thrilled, too, is Zombie, a Stern listener since 1985 - the same year he formed White Zombie in New York. “It’s extra cool, because we’re doing the track together,” says Zombie, who wrote his soundtrack song over the phone with his regular collaborator, Charlie Clousser of Nine Inch Nails.

Stern adds that the Zombie/Stern collaboration may eventually be made into a videoclip, with Zombie directing. Already lensed is a Liz Friedlander-directed video for “Hard Charger”; it and the single go out early this month, Gold says.

Stern will travel the country to promote the movie and album at radio and elsewhere. “There will be all kinds of incredibly crazy stuff celebrating the launch,” Gold says, starting with the initial packaging of the album itself. Of the first million copies pressed, 600,000 will feature cover art showing a nude Stern dwarfing the New York skyline, but with his private parts hidden by the Empire State Building.

This will become the permanent cover graphic after selling the remaining 400,000 one-time-only copies, which will feature three “outrageous” alternative covers, says Gold. The multiple-cover scheme is modeled after the release last year of the paperback version of “Miss America.”

Meanwhile, a fifth cover version of the album will be promo-only and have hands strategically placed to cover Stern’s private area.

Inserted into one copy of the first million issued will be a certificate entitling the bearer to a solid-gold version of the CD, to be delivered to him/her in a Brink’s armored truck.