It's not unusual, to invoke Tom Jones, that brothers should share outsize talents for endeavors both business and artistic. But few have managed it as seamlessly as the brothers Yorn—Kevin, Rick, and Pete. Since packing their ambitions and steaming west starting in the 1990s, the Montville, New Jersey, natives have cut an impressive swath through Hollywood and the music industry. "But we're more like the Three Stooges," clarifies singer-songwriter Pete, "except I guess those guys weren't all brothers."
Pete, 33, the youngest Yorn and still single, loped into pop-culture consciousness with the literate indie rock of his 2001 gold-record debut, Musicforthemorningafter, and has since released several more well-received albums. Oldest brother Kevin, 42, a former prosecutor in the Los Angeles County district attorney's office, cofounded the L.A. entertainment-law powerhouse Morris Yorn Barnes & Levine, whose clients include Ellen DeGeneres and Scarlett Johansson. Rick, 40, manages the careers of Martin Scorsese and Cameron Diaz, and is cochairman of the Firm, Hollywood's dominant artist management company.
The Yorns—minus the famously press-shy Rick—are parked in the contempo-eclectic splendor of the Morris Yorn offices in Century City, which Kevin designed. The contrast between Pete's Messiah-length hair and beard and Kevin's immaculate power-exec grooming is such that it would take their mom to vouch for them as siblings—Joan Yorn, a former concert pianist and current Morris Yorn receptionist, who happens to toil outside Kevin's office. Clearly, she brought her boys up right. They are, by Hollywood standards, surreally polite—when Pete yanks out an iPhone in the middle of one of Kevin's monologues, it is to show a visitor a photo of their 97-year-old grandfather.
So how did this band of brothers conquer Hollywood?
"My dad"—Lawrence, a dentist—"always loved the West Coast," Pete says. "And he knew if he could convince him"—he points to Kevin—"to move out here, then my middle brother"—Rick—"would probably follow him, and then I'd follow my middle brother, and then he could convince my mom to retire with him out here."
"It was basically a scam," Kevin says.
Call it the Yorn conspiracy. But it probably wouldn't have worked were it not for the brothers' bond, forged around rock 'n' roll. As teenagers, they played pickup basketball, their boom box howling Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and all three joined high school garage bands, channeling the stereotypes of birth order with remarkable precision: Big brother Kevin was lead singer, mercurial Rick took up the drums, and quiet Pete absorbed it all from the sidelines—until Rick gave him a drum lesson or two and was then astonished to hear his baby brother thrash like Alex Van Halen on "Dance the Night Away." Rick was the drummer in Pete's early L.A. bands while maintaining his day job managing the careers of Benicio Del Toro and Leonardo DiCaprio.
"Pete's 100 percent the most natural musician," Kevin says. "But we all have a big creative slant." Despite this creative cohesion, the Yorns would like you to know that they sometimes get on one another's nerves.
"Me and him," Pete says, acknowledging Kevin, "never fight." Pete and Rick, and Rick and Kevin, however...
"Put it this way," Kevin says. "When you're with Rick it's like that Dylan song: 'Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow, things should start to get interesting right about now.' We're really, really close, but there are very strong personalities here, and sometimes that makes it difficult."
"Like on Sunday," Pete says, "we were gonna have dinner at Rick's house. So I pick up two loaves of fresh Italian bread, and I get there and he's like, 'That's all the fucking bread you got?'"
"That's the stuff he gets worked up about," Kevin says. "So he calls me and I had to go get the bread."
"Then I left, too, and got more bread," Pete says. "So we had, like, 12 loaves of bread. But it's fun to watch brothers fight. Like Liam and Noel"—Gallagher, of Oasis—"or the Davies brothers"—the Kinks' Ray and Dave Davies.
"But if we got in a physical fight?" Kevin interjects with mock solemnity. "We never would. But if we did? I'd kick the crap out of the guy."
