During the Integral years, McNamee formed a band, the Flying Other Brothers, with his younger brother, Giles, a Boston banker. The band was so named because no matter where they played, at least one McNamee brother had to get on a plane. But music wasn’t just a pastime; it was a networking tool. At tech conferences, McNamee jammed with the biggest names in the industry. (He once sang Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing” with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.) Later, after McNamee co-founded Silver Lake Partners (keeping Integral as a partner) in 1999, visitors to his office came face-to-face with a life-size papier-mâché Jerry Garcia. By that time, McNamee was more than a mere Deadhead: During the late ’90s, he had begun serving as a business adviser to the band.
It was through the Grateful Dead that he met Bono. The Dead had been selling music, concert tickets, and T-shirts directly to fans on the internet and was interested in creating a broader platform that would allow other artists to do the same. McNamee helped devise a business plan. The Dead approached U2 as a potential partner, and McNamee spent months discussing the idea (which would later be shelved) with Bono.
By 2001, Ann had retired from Swarthmore, and the couple were living together full-time in the Bay Area. Then, in June, while returning home from a trip to Dublin and New York, McNamee had a stroke, soon to be followed by a second one. “I’m in the car service headed home at 3:30 in the morning, when all of a sudden, it felt like somebody had poured chocolate sauce on top of my head. It felt really good for 10 or 15 seconds. Then, boom, the lights went out.”
He was 45. Open-heart surgery corrected a defect he’d never known he had. He recuperated for nearly three months. Then, only because his partners were out of the country, he returned to work—on September 11, 2001. After the strokes, he says, things were different at Silver Lake. Sources close to the firm say some there resented how the spotlight always seemed to shine on McNamee, even for deals in which he was less involved. Some also felt he overreached at times, trying to assert expertise in areas where others were more qualified.
Debates over the future of Silver Lake, McNamee says, grew increasingly heated. His desire to stay small, with time to focus on the strategic direction of each company in the firm’s portfolio, was at odds, he says, with the expanding vision of his partners. In 2003, his tenure at Silver Lake came to an end.
“My partners said, ‘You know, we kind of think it’s time for you to move on,’ ” McNamee says, recalling how they surprised him by suggesting he take a more limited role at the firm.
Asked what had led to the rift, he says, “I think the simple answer is, I’m an acquired taste and high maintenance, and culturally speaking, they liked it better without me.”
He admits he could have reacted with less emotion. But so, he says, could his partners. “One of them told the whole world I still had a huge health problem, and all I really wanted to do was play music. Oh, it was really ugly.”
Jim Davidson, a Silver Lake co-founder who remains at the firm, calls McNamee “truly gifted” and “instrumental” to Silver Lake’s early success. McNamee and his wife are godparents to all three of Davidson’s children, and their friendship survived McNamee’s departure. But the end, he acknowledges, was tough.
“Roger’s investment performance stacks up with the best, but he is not willing to compromise, whether in his investment business or his band or his friendships,” Davidson says. “And that can be hard on people.”
In 2003, just as McNamee was starting to wonder what he’d do next, his cell phone rang. It was Bono, calling from the south of France. They hadn’t talked in about two years, but the rock star had an idea about investing in the music business. That idea was the seed that would grow into what Elevation is today.
“The story of my life is bouncing back,” McNamee says, noting that, in the ’90s, he used to say his perfect year included 20 Grateful Dead shows, 20 days of skiing, and 20 baseball games. “Now my goals are much less specific than they were then. And they’re certainly not numerical. I make crisper choices now.” Asked to describe a perfect year today, he says, “Any year I survive.”
Elevation had its first crisis last year, when one of its founding partners, John Riccitiello, left to return to his previous employer, the videogame giant Electronic Arts. The departure of a managing director—a rare and troubling development so early in a fund’s life—heightened some investors’ concerns that the “first-time fund” (with a management team that had never worked together) wouldn’t click. McNamee, whose ties to E.A. go back to his T. Rowe Price days, had recruited Riccitiello to join Elevation. Although Riccitiello said he left only because his dream job—C.E.O. of E.A.—opened up, others confirm that he and McNamee clashed.
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