WEBVTT - Ed Bicknell 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.560 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left SATs podcast. 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:19.160 My guest today is manager agent drummer Ed mcnell ed. 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:21.920 Tell me about the first time you saw a dire street. 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:30.120 That was on December the thirteenth, nineteen seventy seven. It 0:00:30.240 --> 0:00:32.360 was just a small club in North London, in a 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:37.120 part of town called Camden, at a club called Dingwalls. 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:42.040 I had been I was at the time. I was 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:47.159 an agent. I was representing, amongst others, all of Seymour 0:00:47.240 --> 0:00:52.240 Stein's acts bless him. And I had a Talking Heads 0:00:52.280 --> 0:00:55.240 tour coming up in January seventy eight for which I 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.800 needed an opening act. I had fifty English pounds to 0:01:00.080 --> 0:01:06.400 ben and which in current money would be about fifty 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:14.600 one pounds. And I had had a phone call from 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.680 a guy called John Stains, who was the A and 0:01:17.800 --> 0:01:22.800 R guy at Phonogram in the UK, who I knew 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:25.920 just through you know, being in the agency business and 0:01:25.959 --> 0:01:27.959 so on. And he called me up and he said 0:01:28.000 --> 0:01:33.480 I've just signed a band called Diastraits, to which my 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:39.640 first reaction, instantly, spontaneously was what a terrible name. And 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:44.080 he says, how fucking hell be serious? I said, I 0:01:44.120 --> 0:01:49.520 am being serious. It's a terrible name, but he's pushed. 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:51.760 He pushed me like a good an R guy should, 0:01:51.920 --> 0:01:56.000 and long story shot, I ended up going with him 0:01:56.480 --> 0:02:01.120 to an incredibly cheap and greasy kibab how in North London, 0:02:01.920 --> 0:02:06.000 followed by walking across the road to ding Walls. I 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:12.080 walked into the venue, which was maybe a third full, 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:17.919 and they were playing down to the Waterline, which ended 0:02:18.000 --> 0:02:22.000 up on the first album. And I the first thing, 0:02:22.400 --> 0:02:26.320 I was able to stand quite close to them because 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:29.520 they were not very loud. At the time. I was booking, 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:34.840 amongst other acts, Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and I 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:39.320 was used to Black Sabbath and Deep Purple volume levels 0:02:39.680 --> 0:02:44.640 and Dastrets were pretty quiet. And the second thing I 0:02:44.720 --> 0:02:48.920 noticed was that Martinoffler was playing a red Fender stratocastic guitar. 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:54.359 The same guitar had been played by a guitarist called 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.359 Hank Marvin who'd been in a band called The Shadows. 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.440 They were Cliff Richard's backing band and then they became 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:05.720 a band on their own. They had a whole string 0:03:05.760 --> 0:03:10.120 of hits with instrumentals. I've always been very fond of 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:18.000 instrumentals for some reason, and a combination of that guitar, 0:03:20.080 --> 0:03:23.359 the and the what what they were what they were performing, 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:30.200 I mean the songs basically almost immediately kind of got 0:03:30.240 --> 0:03:33.760 me hooked. And remember I was looking for a support 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:38.280 band for the Talking Heads. I was not considering getting 0:03:38.280 --> 0:03:42.880 into management, although I was dealing with a large number 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:48.200 of managers who were completely incompetent. So I thought, well, 0:03:48.400 --> 0:03:51.360 if they can do it, I can do this. So 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:55.800 I went. I met them after the show, asked them 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:57.960 if they'd like to come into my office the next day. 0:03:58.640 --> 0:04:01.280 I was sharing my office with another agent. I got 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.840 him to move out of the office. He thought I 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:07.840 just meant him. I didn't. I met his desk, his chairs, 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:11.880 filing cabinets and everything, and I arranged my rearrange my 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:14.760 office to make it look like it was extremely large 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:18.640 and I was very, very, very important. And when the 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:27.000 guys came in, I got the receptionist to keep buzzing me, 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:30.159 and I said, to whatever I say, you just keep 0:04:30.200 --> 0:04:33.520 buzzing me until I tell you to stop. So the 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:36.160 three of them, because they picked the drummer, didn't come 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:39.120 to meetings. So the three of them, the two and 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:42.800 Offler brothers and John Illesley sat down on a kind 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:47.000 of seating thing, and my phone went and I immediately 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:49.160 grabbed it and I just there was nobody on the 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:51.279 other end, and I just said, tell him I want 0:04:51.320 --> 0:04:56.240 ten grand and slammed it down. Oh. I should say 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.720 also that I was working at a company called NAMS, 0:05:00.080 --> 0:05:07.480 which was Brian Epstein's old company he had long since past, unfortunately, 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:09.520 but it did mean that we had a lot of 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:13.719 Beetles and other type of golden platinum records in the basement. 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.320 So in the intermediate period, I'd gone downstairs and I've 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:18.880 got a whole load of these and put them up 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:24.000 on my wall, added a couple of purple discs and 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.360 some of the people we were representing to make it 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:30.120 look like I had something to do with them, when 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:35.040 in fact I didn't. And every time I took one 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:37.279 of these phone calls, I could see the guys looking 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.640 at these records and pointing to you know, a gold 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.039 disc for I want to hold your hand or something, 0:05:43.080 --> 0:05:49.360 and whispering to each other. And I basically went through 0:05:50.400 --> 0:05:53.479 series of questions, have you got any money? No? Have 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:56.800 you got a van? No? Have you got any gear? No? 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:04.280 Have you got a roadie? Kind of okay, talking Heads 0:06:04.320 --> 0:06:08.440 tour fifty pounds a night, twenty three shows January next year. 0:06:10.960 --> 0:06:16.640 Do you want to do it? And Mark, quite I 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:21.800 thought intelligently, did not immediately go yes and jump into it. 0:06:21.880 --> 0:06:24.560 He asked if he could hear some of their music, 0:06:24.600 --> 0:06:28.919 because at that point they had done one tour of 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:34.360 the UK and Europe, which I'd set up the previous June. 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:41.680 Excuse me and the talk with the Ramones. That's right, 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.400 So the Talking Heads were not known. They were known 0:06:46.480 --> 0:06:49.520 to the people who were into the kind of new 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:53.120 wave thing, but that was really only starting. That would 0:06:53.120 --> 0:06:57.320 have been seventy six, so this was late seventy seven. Anyway, 0:06:57.360 --> 0:07:00.960 they took the record away. He called me up that 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:03.200 evening and he said, yeah, we'd like to do it, 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.360 and so I put them on that tour. I got 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:12.000 them guessed billing I had. I paid the Talking Head 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:14.760 sound man, who I'd hired anyway, for an extra five 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:20.720 pounds to do their sound. I we didn't have any lights. 0:07:21.080 --> 0:07:23.640 We just had white light, which was what the Talking 0:07:23.680 --> 0:07:28.600 Heads wanted anyway, and it was everybody rode in the 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:33.040 same van. They all met outside the hotel in London 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.960 on the first day and both bands got on really well, 0:07:37.160 --> 0:07:41.480 and it worked musically really really well. That might not 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:45.400 be obvious to some of your listeners, but it did 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:50.280 blend together. And they're talking Airs of course weren't a 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:56.640 punk band. They'd been kind of thrown into that box 0:07:56.800 --> 0:08:00.000 because they were on Sire Records, but they weren't really 0:08:00.120 --> 0:08:02.520 they want thought of as a punk band, and we 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:06.280 hadn't really invented the words new wave at that point. 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:14.200 So they did twenty three shows in twenty four days, 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.280 which is how I always toured bands. They were still 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:21.400 doing twenty three in twenty four when they broke up. 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:26.080 Why they broke up? Had they got an on call 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:30.360 us every night? They got great press. The two bands 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:33.280 got on really great. They used to do a jam 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:35.840 on take Me to the River, the Al Green's song 0:08:36.000 --> 0:08:39.839 at the end. And while they were on that tour 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.680 Phonogram John Stains, the A and R guy I mentioned 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:51.320 he'd set about trying to find a record producer for 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:54.920 the first Stars Traits album, and of course Darstrets were 0:08:54.920 --> 0:09:00.840 completely unknown. There were two people who were interested. One 0:09:00.880 --> 0:09:04.520 was a guitar player called Pete Gage who'd been with 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.679 a sol band, British sol band called Gina Washington and 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:13.760 the Ramjam Band, and the other was Muff Windward, brother 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:17.760 of Steve, as he would tell every girl who came 0:09:17.800 --> 0:09:26.600 into the control room. And there was a funny little 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:30.680 thing went on. The way that the record deal was 0:09:30.720 --> 0:09:33.199 set up, because it had been done before I came 0:09:33.240 --> 0:09:38.520 into the picture by the band's then lawyer, was that 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:44.680 they got on advance, which was okay, nothing spectacular. The 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.400 rules is were not very good. They got seven and 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:51.280 a half percent in what were called the major markets, 0:09:51.520 --> 0:09:57.000 and they got six percent in the minor markets. And 0:09:57.320 --> 0:10:01.720 Phonogram paid the record producer. And I'll tell you a 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:04.959 short story which will embarrass Muff if he's watching this. 0:10:08.040 --> 0:10:14.680 Muff did a deal with business affairs Phonogram for a 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:22.600 two percent royalty and twenty five hundred pounds advance. And 0:10:22.679 --> 0:10:25.360 about two days before the record started, he called me 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.720 up and he said, I'm not very happy about my deal, 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:33.080 and I went, really, just you know, and he said, 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:37.120 I said, how can I make you happy? Muff? And 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:41.120 he said, well, you know, I'd like some kind of 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:45.280 an increase. I said, well, actually that's the responsibility of 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.240 the record company, but let me see what I can do. 0:10:47.280 --> 0:10:49.360 So I put the phone down and without ringing the 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:52.920 record company. I waited for about ten minutes and I 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:56.280 called him back and I said, okay, you can have 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.720 I could get you either an extra half a percent 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:04.920 or five hundred pounds, and he took the five hundred 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:11.920 pounds and the record sold fifteen million. But I have 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:19.520 to say he was very gentlemanly about it. In fact, 0:11:19.600 --> 0:11:21.880 he was actually on a two week break. He was 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:25.400 leaving Island Records, where it was running A and R 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:29.120 to move over to what was then CBS where he 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:31.560 was going to be running A and R there, and 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.400 he managed in that two weeks he did the whole 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:37.600 of the Dastrets record and half of an album for 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:38.360 somebody else. 0:11:40.360 --> 0:11:44.360 Okay, when you go to see Dire Streets to decide 0:11:44.360 --> 0:11:47.240 whether they're going to be on the Talking Heads tour? A, 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.520 do they have a manager? B? How do you become 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:52.240 the manager? 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.320 Answered the first half of that question. No, they didn't. 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.040 Robert Allen, who was the lawyer that they had at 0:12:01.080 --> 0:12:08.439 the time, had approached the big name managers, Steve A. 0:12:08.559 --> 0:12:10.720 Rock for instance, the late Steve A. Rook who was 0:12:10.720 --> 0:12:15.400 managing Pink Floyd. I can't remember who the others were 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.320 and of course they all said, because anybody who approaches 0:12:19.440 --> 0:12:22.160 a big name manager, the big name manager is a 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:25.479 big name manager because he has a big name act. 0:12:26.960 --> 0:12:29.160 But that also means that he probably doesn't have very 0:12:29.200 --> 0:12:34.439 much time, or he's got other baby acts that he's 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:37.760 trying to bring through. And that was the case with everybody, 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:41.440 and they all basically said to Robert, you know, bog Off, Robert, 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.440 we don't want your POxy little group. Because of their name, 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:47.880 because of the name Darstras, everybody thought they were a 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:54.680 punk group. They had done a demo of four songs 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:59.760 with a London DJ called Charlie Gillert. Sorry, they've done 0:12:59.760 --> 0:13:04.120 the the demo themselves and Charlie had played it on 0:13:04.200 --> 0:13:11.080 his London radio show. That was the only exposure they'd had. So, no, 0:13:11.200 --> 0:13:13.959 they didn't have a manager. They were at the point 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:17.480 where they needed one. I mean they kind of in fact, 0:13:17.520 --> 0:13:19.280 in some ways they could have. It would have been 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:22.000 better off if I got involved a bit earlier, but 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:29.880 that wasn't the way it worked. And they No, they 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:34.400 didn't have a manager and they were but the good 0:13:34.440 --> 0:13:37.200 thing about them was that they everything was kind of 0:13:37.280 --> 0:13:41.640 in place. They had a publishing deal with Almo Irving 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:45.960 or Rondo music as it's called over here, which although everybody, 0:13:46.000 --> 0:13:48.520 all four of them, Robert had got them a published, 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.600 each one of them a publishing thing to keep the 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:57.600 politics good happy between them, but that really only meant 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:02.880 mark in practice. They had this record deal. They didn't 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:07.240 have a record deal for North America, which was quite important. 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:12.079 Hey, what motivated the record deal? This is a band 0:14:12.120 --> 0:14:14.520 with no manager, no thing. How did they get the 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:18.040 record deal? And why was Warner Brothers not included in 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:19.120 the Phonogram deal? 0:14:19.240 --> 0:14:25.600 Okay, the record deal came about because the four track demo. 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:27.880 What happened was they made this four track demo in 0:14:27.920 --> 0:14:31.440 a little studio in North London with an engineer called 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:35.640 Chas Herrington, who I later asked to become our lighting director, 0:14:35.840 --> 0:14:39.280 and he became a lighting man and he's a fantastic 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:45.720 lighting guy. And John Illsley, the bass player, who was 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.880 very much the organizer of the band at that point, 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:55.280 he took that demo round to Charlie's house and delivered 0:14:55.320 --> 0:15:01.680 it one morning and Charlie played it at home, thought 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:04.200 it was great. The songs on it were saltless, a 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:08.160 swing down to the waterline, wild West End, and a 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:11.440 song called Sacred Loving that they didn't record in the end, 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:18.280 and Charlie played it on his radio show. And Charlie's 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.880 radio show was a kind of arbiter of taste if 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:26.680 you like. It wasn't like Radio one, BBC or anything 0:15:26.760 --> 0:15:29.440 like that. So a lot of people in the business 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:34.360 who were music fans, including John Stains, would listen to this, 0:15:34.440 --> 0:15:39.120 and John heard it. Several other people did and on 0:15:39.160 --> 0:15:41.920 the Monday we went out on a Saturday, and on 0:15:41.960 --> 0:15:44.880 the Monday morning, Rob Allen starts getting phone calls from 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:49.000 A and R guys saying, who's this band you just played? 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:54.360 Everybody thought they were American. Nobody knew anything about them, 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.800 and it kind of got into something that I never 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:02.440 did as part of my practice, but it became a 0:16:02.440 --> 0:16:06.880 bit of a bidding war. Chris Blackwell, who's quite a 0:16:06.920 --> 0:16:09.440 good friend of mine, told me a great story about 0:16:09.440 --> 0:16:12.520 how he was invited to see them because his A 0:16:12.640 --> 0:16:15.080 and R guy was Chap called at Howard Thompson wanted 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:19.560 to sign them very badly. So Chris went to see 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:23.040 them at some other pub gig in London and halfway 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:26.760 down the staircase into the basement, he was stopped by 0:16:26.800 --> 0:16:30.080 somebody he knew who dragged him to the bar, and 0:16:30.120 --> 0:16:34.960 he never saw them and he missed out. Richard Branson 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:39.760 invited them to lunch, and during the kind of the 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:46.040 coffee and dessert bit, various personnel from Virgin came out 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:49.880 in this restaurant and presented the group with plates of 0:16:50.520 --> 0:16:56.080 ready roll joints. And none of them smoked weed, and 0:16:56.160 --> 0:17:01.200 in fact they were quite anti So that screwed it 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:06.359 for Vergin. It's amazing how little things like that and 0:17:06.480 --> 0:17:11.880 what's happened at the time as the Phonogram once they 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.960 decided to go. The band had decided to go with Phonogram, 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:25.520 and Robert was brokering the financial details. Everybody, well not 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:28.680 the group guys because they didn't know, but everybody else 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:35.120 decided that the American the PolyGram operation in America was 0:17:35.359 --> 0:17:40.359 not really happening, and a clause was put in of 0:17:40.440 --> 0:17:48.640 which I was to make enormous play that if RSO 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:54.119 passed on the group, the rights to place the American 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:59.280 deal would revert to the band, which went me, who 0:17:59.280 --> 0:18:03.400 had never read record agreement, done alone, done a record deal. 0:18:04.800 --> 0:18:08.399 And RSO passed Because this was nineteen seventy seven and 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:13.320 they were right on the cusp of Robert Stigwood's you 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:21.000 know all of that, and thank goodness, that's what That's 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:21.600 what happened. 0:18:21.640 --> 0:18:21.960 I did. 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:27.560 I was subjected some time later, before the Wallers deal 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.600 was actually signed. I was somebody dead attempt to bribe 0:18:31.640 --> 0:18:35.159 me who had been sent by PolyGram, who took me 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:37.720 into a jacuzzie in Los Angeles and offered me one 0:18:37.800 --> 0:18:43.040 hundred thousand dollars if the band would quote forget about 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:47.080 that clause, and I just fled. 0:18:54.840 --> 0:18:59.000 Okay, So one thing at one time, RSO passes. How 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:01.359 do you end up at Warner Brothers as opposed to 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:02.760 Columbia or anything else? 0:19:03.119 --> 0:19:07.200 Well, well you're very close because the other competing label 0:19:07.320 --> 0:19:14.000 was Columbia. What happened to this is such a long story. 0:19:14.400 --> 0:19:19.960 There were two ladies, sadly both gone deceased now at 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:24.400 Warner Brothers, Karen Berg on the East coast and ROBERTA. 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:29.840 Peterson on the West coast. An unbeknownst to anybody, including 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:36.760 both of them, each of those girls heard this record 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:40.760 or heard about this band. Karen came over to London, 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:45.440 went to see them at a club we had here 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:54.240 called the Nashville and Roberta. I think Roberta. I don't 0:19:54.240 --> 0:20:01.520 remember how Roberta got onto it, but they I didn't 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:04.000 know either of these people, and I didn't know that 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:09.280 they were interested. At that particular moment we started getting 0:20:11.280 --> 0:20:15.800 interest from Columbia. I don't remember who the A and 0:20:15.880 --> 0:20:19.480 R person was, and I think there might have been 0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:21.840 some other labels for some reason. I've got A and 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:24.200 M in my mind, and they would have been a 0:20:24.320 --> 0:20:26.920 very kind of A and M type of act, and 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:29.320 of course A and M. But I remember A and 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.520 M have of course had got picked up the publishing 0:20:32.400 --> 0:20:34.640 or Jerry Boss knew of them through that. 0:20:36.440 --> 0:20:36.840 And. 0:20:41.280 --> 0:20:47.720 Mark and I flew over to Los Angeles in the summer, 0:20:49.000 --> 0:20:53.320 must have been about they had after the Talking Heads tour. 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:57.000 I just kept them working for two reasons. One they 0:20:57.000 --> 0:21:01.200 had no money and secondly, they need to play. They 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:05.639 needed to play live. So I had them doing stuff 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:08.719 that was ridiculous. I mean they opened for Sticks of 0:21:08.760 --> 0:21:12.560 all People, which was just ridiculous, but didn't matter. They 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:16.120 got to play for an hour, and they started doing 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.120 their own shows, and in June of nineteen seventy eight 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:22.720 they did their first headlining tour of Britain, which was 0:21:22.760 --> 0:21:26.640 college's kind of town halls, which held about two thousand people. 0:21:28.880 --> 0:21:31.920 The Marquee Club in London got them a residency there 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:36.960 and they got a really good buzz going. In June 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:40.520 of seventy eight, that first album was released in the 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:46.119 UK and not at that point in the rest of 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:50.760 the world territories, and Mark and I came over to 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:55.840 the States in I think it was July seventy eight 0:21:55.920 --> 0:22:01.159 to meet This whole thing was out of time with itself, 0:22:01.280 --> 0:22:06.320 because by July seventy eight we were already looking at 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:11.400 album number two, because he'd already written a bunch of songs, 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:14.000 and there were one or two songs which had not 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:24.119 made it onto the first record. And Karen Berg was 0:22:24.160 --> 0:22:27.400 working on the in the East Coast office of Warner Brothers. 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:33.040 And the person who, at least in his own mind, 0:22:33.160 --> 0:22:35.680 was running the East Coast office, but he wasn't really 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:41.040 was Jerry Wexler. And Jerry Wexler heard this record being 0:22:41.040 --> 0:22:44.200 played in the offices. And one thing I'll say about 0:22:44.280 --> 0:22:51.240 Jerry Wexler is he could spot a dime at five 0:22:51.320 --> 0:22:56.240 miles and he very quickly jumped onto this and Mark 0:22:56.280 --> 0:23:02.320 and I went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, for what for 0:23:02.480 --> 0:23:06.160 us was an absolutely thrilling trip. I mean, we get 0:23:06.200 --> 0:23:09.800 there and Wexler, we had not met, we meet him. 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:13.760 He comes and we're putt in a we're put in 0:23:13.800 --> 0:23:17.640 a We're put in a motel that must have cost 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:21.840 one dollar fifty a night. I remember my bed was 0:23:22.119 --> 0:23:26.800 padlocked to the floor. Each leg of the bed had 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:29.960 a padlock chained to a lump of concrete to stop 0:23:30.000 --> 0:23:36.320 anybody pinching the bed. Wexler arrived the following morning, met 0:23:36.400 --> 0:23:40.360 us immediately took us off to a southern road stop 0:23:41.320 --> 0:23:44.919 where I remember that the waitress was wearing takeaway bags 0:23:44.920 --> 0:23:53.000 on her feet, and he he took us off to 0:23:53.080 --> 0:23:57.320 the studio and he was recording Mavis Staples and we 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:03.480 are like, holy shit shit, And of course the guys, 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:11.400 the musicians were the swampers. There was David Hurd, Barry Beckett, 0:24:13.200 --> 0:24:21.280 Jimmy Johnson, and the next day Pop Staples flew down 0:24:21.320 --> 0:24:26.119 from Chicago, and I remember going out to pick up 0:24:26.200 --> 0:24:33.320 Pops at the airport with Wexler and Mark and we 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:36.760 went back to the studio and they were recording J. J. 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:44.160 Kale's Lies and Wexler, ever the opportunist bless him, invited 0:24:44.280 --> 0:24:46.399 Mark to play with these guys. Mark had never done 0:24:46.440 --> 0:24:48.960 a session in his life. I mean, he was completely, like, 0:24:50.600 --> 0:24:56.560 totally gibbering with terror. And they didn't use court notes. 0:24:56.760 --> 0:24:59.480 They had this numbers system, whether you know what that 0:24:59.640 --> 0:25:03.919 is in muscle. In that studio, a number represented a chord, 0:25:05.000 --> 0:25:09.679 So you might have six, five, eleven, twelve nine written 0:25:09.680 --> 0:25:12.639 on the sheet of paper and given to you. And 0:25:12.680 --> 0:25:14.680 Mark's looking at a set of numbers. He just look 0:25:14.760 --> 0:25:20.320 what they are. But he knew the song obviously. And 0:25:20.359 --> 0:25:23.640 I remember thereafter the couple of takes, Pops walked out 0:25:23.680 --> 0:25:28.040 into the studio and he actually put his face within 0:25:28.280 --> 0:25:32.800 about two inches from Mark's face and just stared at him. 0:25:33.760 --> 0:25:36.679 And I said to Wexler, what's what's going on? And 0:25:36.720 --> 0:25:44.000 Wesley goes, he likes him. So we did that record Mayvi. 0:25:44.040 --> 0:25:47.520 This was great. Unfortunately Mayvis had a bit of a complaint. 0:25:47.600 --> 0:25:50.520 She had a weak bladder, so she kept going to 0:25:50.560 --> 0:25:54.600 the bathroom, and of course, being English, we assumed that 0:25:54.640 --> 0:25:57.760 she had a massive cocaine problem, when in fact, as 0:25:57.800 --> 0:26:02.520 she explained to the two of us, the law the 0:26:02.600 --> 0:26:07.080 Lord gave me a problem in that department but we 0:26:07.640 --> 0:26:10.720 did that record. I can't even remember if Mark's credited 0:26:10.760 --> 0:26:14.359 on it. And we hung out with everybody for about 0:26:14.560 --> 0:26:22.479 ten days. Fantastic fun. I remember Bobby Womac showed up. 0:26:22.760 --> 0:26:24.960 I had done a tour with Bobby Womack about two 0:26:25.040 --> 0:26:29.480 years previously of Europe, and he showed up with his 0:26:29.600 --> 0:26:33.520 new wife, whose name was well, the way he pronounced 0:26:33.560 --> 0:26:40.600 it was Vagina, and he meant Virginia, but he didn't pronounce. 0:26:40.880 --> 0:26:44.640 He kept calling this as my new watch, She's called Vagina, 0:26:45.000 --> 0:26:49.200 and everybody in the room was just it was everything 0:26:49.320 --> 0:26:53.760 was a laugh. We were staying at a crap motel. 0:26:54.200 --> 0:26:56.879 The swimming pool was empty and it was full of 0:26:57.880 --> 0:27:03.560 shopping baskets had been thrown in there. But we love 0:27:03.640 --> 0:27:06.760 the South, loved that part of the country, loved the people. 0:27:07.720 --> 0:27:16.439 We got very friendly with Barry Beckett, and we flew 0:27:16.560 --> 0:27:22.399 on to Los Angeles, stayed stayed at the Riot House, 0:27:24.040 --> 0:27:28.960 and I Mark wasn't really he had he didn't have 0:27:29.080 --> 0:27:35.160 much to do, but I was having meetings principally with Warners, 0:27:36.520 --> 0:27:39.480 and I can remember going up there with one copy 0:27:39.520 --> 0:27:44.800 of the album in the vinyl copy under my arm, 0:27:45.400 --> 0:27:49.800 and I had bullshitted my way in to see ma Austin. 0:27:51.080 --> 0:27:53.080 I'd never met Mo in my life, and I just 0:27:53.680 --> 0:27:58.000 bbbbbing got in and he said to me, I'll never 0:27:58.040 --> 0:28:01.719 forget it, and he was so I grew to really 0:28:02.160 --> 0:28:07.080 have huge respect for great liking. He said, I don't 0:28:07.119 --> 0:28:10.040 know anything about music, Go and see THEA and R Department, 0:28:11.000 --> 0:28:14.199 which of course he definitely did know about music, but 0:28:14.280 --> 0:28:19.200 it was probably a bit more Frank Sinatra and Dean 0:28:19.600 --> 0:28:23.040 than it was, you know, although he'd been involved in 0:28:23.480 --> 0:28:26.600 signing those acts from the Monterey Festival, like Jimi Hendrix 0:28:26.640 --> 0:28:30.680 and some And he picked up the phone and he 0:28:30.800 --> 0:28:33.800 rang somebody and that turned out to be Roberta. So 0:28:33.880 --> 0:28:37.199 I was sent down to see Roberta. And there was 0:28:37.240 --> 0:28:43.120 this little blonde girl sitting in an office which had 0:28:43.200 --> 0:28:48.400 more palm trees and plants than I'd ever seen in 0:28:48.440 --> 0:28:53.960 my life. She's got the requisite California tan. I give 0:28:53.960 --> 0:28:57.920 her a record and it was kind of a bit 0:28:58.000 --> 0:29:00.600 spinal tap because she put it on and cranked the 0:29:00.680 --> 0:29:05.280 volume up to eleven and I'm sitting there and my 0:29:05.360 --> 0:29:09.880 hair is kind of the wind and she played the 0:29:09.880 --> 0:29:13.000 whole of the first side, flipped it over and played 0:29:13.000 --> 0:29:15.640 the whole of the second side, and she told me 0:29:15.720 --> 0:29:20.440 later that she was so excited by it, but she 0:29:20.480 --> 0:29:23.280 didn't want to let on to me because she didn't 0:29:23.320 --> 0:29:28.240 know anything about the deal or the politics or anything. 0:29:28.720 --> 0:29:31.440 But the one thing that she forgot was that she 0:29:31.640 --> 0:29:34.440 was tapping. I could see her feet tapping like mad 0:29:34.600 --> 0:29:40.000 under her desk. And she said to me, where are 0:29:40.000 --> 0:29:42.880 you staying? And I said, we're staying at the Hiat 0:29:43.320 --> 0:29:48.960 and that caused a huge smile to appear, and then 0:29:49.000 --> 0:29:52.320 she said, can I keep this copy? I'd like to 0:29:52.360 --> 0:29:56.760 play it to some other people. I should point out 0:29:56.760 --> 0:30:01.280 at this point that she didn't know that Karen Berg 0:30:02.720 --> 0:30:08.800 was already onto this, and I didn't know that, so 0:30:08.960 --> 0:30:13.320 I'm thinking, yeah, sure, of course you could keep it. 0:30:14.440 --> 0:30:16.200 And I said, she said, how long are you in 0:30:16.200 --> 0:30:20.160 town for? I said, how long do you need? You know, whatever? 0:30:22.480 --> 0:30:24.840 And I went back to the hotel and Mark and 0:30:24.840 --> 0:30:30.200 I went and celebrated in the Highat coffee shop, and 0:30:33.440 --> 0:30:37.959 very quickly after that, it was like the snowball coming 0:30:38.000 --> 0:30:44.920 down the mountain picking up snow. And all musicians are effected. 0:30:45.360 --> 0:30:48.160 Anybody who plays an instrument is by definition to me 0:30:48.320 --> 0:30:54.200 a musical snob. And we were musical snobs. Warner Brothers 0:30:54.280 --> 0:30:58.480 had Van Morrison, they were just about to release that 0:30:58.520 --> 0:31:04.040 first Ricky Lee Jones good. They just signed Van Halen. 0:31:05.800 --> 0:31:08.760 I can't remember the other kinds of acts you were, 0:31:08.680 --> 0:31:11.200 the kind of acts that Lenny Warneker would work with 0:31:11.320 --> 0:31:14.080 or people like that. They were kind of like our 0:31:14.280 --> 0:31:20.160 kind of thing. And Columbia, well, first of all, they 0:31:20.200 --> 0:31:22.600 were based in New York and we didn't know any 0:31:22.640 --> 0:31:25.760 plans to go to New York. And I had had 0:31:25.800 --> 0:31:30.560 dealings with Columbia in the UK and this is back then, 0:31:31.120 --> 0:31:34.640 and they were a pain in the arse. They were bureaucratic. 0:31:39.240 --> 0:31:42.920 They were just difficult to deal with. Everything was signing 0:31:43.000 --> 0:31:45.760 a bit of paper, getting a memo, doing all of 0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:54.200 that kind of stuff. And the band. We had to 0:31:54.440 --> 0:31:56.680 get back to England because the band were doing their 0:31:56.800 --> 0:32:01.840 first trip to Europe, which turned out to be a 0:32:01.880 --> 0:32:07.200 seminal event because we went to Holland. What how was 0:32:07.240 --> 0:32:09.080 I got back And this is back in the days 0:32:09.080 --> 0:32:14.880 of telex. I get telex in about September of that year, 0:32:15.360 --> 0:32:19.400 seventy eight from the company in Holland who I'd never 0:32:19.440 --> 0:32:24.320 spoken to, and it said album has entered chart at 0:32:24.400 --> 0:32:28.280 forty three and I just looked at it, crumpled it 0:32:28.400 --> 0:32:31.280 up and I threw it in the bin. The next 0:32:31.280 --> 0:32:33.280 week I got another one. It said album has gone 0:32:33.360 --> 0:32:39.520 up to seventeen, and I went wow, through that one 0:32:39.560 --> 0:32:43.640 in the bin. The next week album has gone up 0:32:43.680 --> 0:32:47.719 to eleven. They had released Songs of Swing as a single. 0:32:49.040 --> 0:32:52.800 Would we go over to Holland and play their weekly 0:32:54.320 --> 0:32:58.080 popsher called Top Pop very much like Top of the 0:32:58.120 --> 0:33:01.760 Pops in the UK. It was a singles show, so 0:33:01.800 --> 0:33:07.880 we went over. This was the original four piece and 0:33:08.600 --> 0:33:12.680 during the show they represented with a gold album, which 0:33:12.800 --> 0:33:16.360 none of us, including me, had any idea about. I 0:33:16.440 --> 0:33:21.640 hadn't at that point got a handle on how to 0:33:22.040 --> 0:33:25.800 use the record company. I wasn't. 0:33:27.400 --> 0:33:27.800 I was. 0:33:29.280 --> 0:33:36.640 Not totally inexperienced, but I didn't know the vagaries of 0:33:36.680 --> 0:33:39.200 how it all worked. We ended up doing or the 0:33:39.240 --> 0:33:45.000 guys ended up doing interviews from ten in the morning 0:33:45.120 --> 0:33:47.960 till ten o'clock at night for two days, and they 0:33:47.960 --> 0:33:52.960 were completely exhausted by it and I had to get 0:33:53.040 --> 0:33:56.800 control of that. But having said that, it worked because 0:33:56.840 --> 0:34:01.520 that record and appear us on that TV show got 0:34:01.600 --> 0:34:03.840 us to number one. So we had our first number 0:34:03.880 --> 0:34:07.480 one and Holland is quite interesting from a geographical point 0:34:07.520 --> 0:34:10.120 of view because it's in right. The radio stations in 0:34:10.239 --> 0:34:13.840 Holland could be heard in Germany, especially in North Germany, 0:34:14.400 --> 0:34:18.680 in Belgium and in northern France. So it was a 0:34:18.719 --> 0:34:21.520 bit like dropping a pebble in a pond and the 0:34:21.600 --> 0:34:28.319 ripples went out and suddenly I'm getting similar tech tallexis 0:34:28.360 --> 0:34:31.320 from Germany, this, that and the other. And we started 0:34:31.440 --> 0:34:36.520 working those territories, by which I mean doing every possible 0:34:36.600 --> 0:34:41.520 television show and every possible interview we could do. My 0:34:41.600 --> 0:34:44.160 attitude to television and it's still the same is that 0:34:44.239 --> 0:34:48.000 all popular music television is rubbish, so you might as 0:34:48.000 --> 0:34:54.720 well do all of it. So we're starting to become 0:34:55.920 --> 0:35:00.319 a bit of a we were getting hot and and 0:35:00.400 --> 0:35:03.319 I was playing we were playing dates. The one thing 0:35:03.320 --> 0:35:07.360 about dar Straits throughout their entire career, but certainly in 0:35:07.440 --> 0:35:11.040 that first two or three years, was their their work 0:35:11.080 --> 0:35:14.959 ethic was unbelievable. I mean you laugh every time I say, 0:35:15.160 --> 0:35:17.439 you know, I put in twenty gigs without a day off. 0:35:17.600 --> 0:35:24.279 That was absolutely common. I days off to me are 0:35:24.280 --> 0:35:26.240 something you do for for Roady's. 0:35:27.560 --> 0:35:30.000 Okay, let's just go back. Got a couple of eyes. 0:35:30.760 --> 0:35:32.360 How did you become the manager? 0:35:35.960 --> 0:35:42.160 Bullshit? Do you know? I don't really know. They came 0:35:42.200 --> 0:35:46.040 into the office that time I was talking about I 0:35:46.040 --> 0:35:50.600 did this whole act because that's what it was, sticking 0:35:50.680 --> 0:35:54.200 up Beatles records on my wall, making the girl phone me, 0:35:54.280 --> 0:35:57.480 all of this sort of stuff. And I think they've 0:35:57.600 --> 0:36:02.240 they told me since when they were left the office 0:36:02.239 --> 0:36:06.360 and they were walking up the road. David Knopfler, younger 0:36:06.520 --> 0:36:11.880 Mark's younger brother, David and Martinofler never agreed about anything. 0:36:13.960 --> 0:36:17.200 If Mark said the sun will come up tomorrow, David 0:36:17.200 --> 0:36:22.080 would say, Nah, it's not going to happen. No. Mark 0:36:22.120 --> 0:36:25.920 and John said, we like that guy. I mean, he's 0:36:25.960 --> 0:36:28.919 a bit off the wall, but he knows what he's 0:36:28.960 --> 0:36:33.319 talking about. And the thing I think that worked was 0:36:33.400 --> 0:36:37.040 that we came from very similar backgrounds. We were the 0:36:37.120 --> 0:36:41.000 same age, we had grown up listening to the same 0:36:41.200 --> 0:36:46.160 kind of music, and we had most importantly the same 0:36:46.239 --> 0:36:52.480 kind of humor. When I was going for drum lessons 0:36:52.560 --> 0:36:57.160 in Leeds in my teens, Mark Knopfler was going to 0:36:57.239 --> 0:37:02.520 the same music shop. At the same time. He would 0:37:02.600 --> 0:37:08.359 turn left into guitars. Woodwinds were on the right, and 0:37:08.400 --> 0:37:13.000 as always, the drum department was in the basement. But 0:37:13.120 --> 0:37:16.600 when we got to know each other because we came 0:37:16.640 --> 0:37:20.720 from within twelve miles of each other. He was actually 0:37:20.719 --> 0:37:23.680 born in Glasgow, grew up in Newcastle on Tyne, and 0:37:23.719 --> 0:37:25.680 then he moved down to Leeds when he was at college. 0:37:27.800 --> 0:37:30.359 And I remember he said to me one day, he said, 0:37:30.440 --> 0:37:33.279 did you used to go to the kitchens of Leeds? No? Yeah, yeah, 0:37:33.320 --> 0:37:34.879 I said, I got my drums done and that's where 0:37:34.880 --> 0:37:37.560 I had lessons. And he said, when I said about 0:37:37.640 --> 0:37:41.279 nineteen sixty three, four or five, he said, that's so weird, 0:37:41.320 --> 0:37:43.200 is is that I was going there at the same time. 0:37:44.640 --> 0:37:49.840 So you have these kind of cosmic connections, I suppose. 0:37:50.400 --> 0:37:50.880 And. 0:37:54.560 --> 0:37:57.799 I think that it was a it was just a 0:37:57.840 --> 0:38:01.760 feeling and I and it was exactly the right time 0:38:01.920 --> 0:38:04.480 for me. I'd been an agent at that point for 0:38:04.480 --> 0:38:10.080 about seven years. I'd represented some very big acts and 0:38:10.160 --> 0:38:13.799 I was kind of I wanted to move on. I 0:38:13.800 --> 0:38:17.600 wanted to get out of it. It was too it 0:38:17.640 --> 0:38:19.680 wasn't like it is now. I mean there was no 0:38:19.840 --> 0:38:23.759 Live Nations AG's nothing like that. And the promoters you 0:38:23.840 --> 0:38:26.000 tended to be dealing with it was all a bit 0:38:26.400 --> 0:38:28.680 crushy fingers and hope that they don't run off to 0:38:28.760 --> 0:38:33.759 Brazil kind of thing. A Back then, a promoter was 0:38:33.800 --> 0:38:37.080 anybody who walked into the office and said I'm a promoter. 0:38:39.640 --> 0:38:41.600 People would walk in and I'd be selling the deep 0:38:41.600 --> 0:38:45.000 purple dates within five minutes, just hoping that they'd have 0:38:45.120 --> 0:38:49.960 enough money to pay the deposit. It was completely chaotic 0:38:50.400 --> 0:38:53.880 and incredible fun, I mean ridiculously fun. 0:38:54.800 --> 0:38:59.279 Okay, you ultimately become the manager. Do you discuss percentage? 0:38:59.320 --> 0:39:02.720 Do you sign a contract? Who just move forward? 0:39:04.360 --> 0:39:08.439 Well, this is where Robert Allen, the lawyer comes back 0:39:08.440 --> 0:39:11.880 into play, because he's busily bringing up Steve A. Rook 0:39:12.760 --> 0:39:15.759 and Steve A. Roake doesn't take collect calls, so we 0:39:15.880 --> 0:39:19.359 can't find them a manager. And they said to him, 0:39:19.680 --> 0:39:22.240 we've met this guy. We want him to be our manager. 0:39:22.360 --> 0:39:26.440 And Robert had never heard of me, and he dragged 0:39:26.440 --> 0:39:32.160 his feet, and one day, I don't remember who it was, 0:39:32.200 --> 0:39:35.759 it probably would have been Mark, rang him up and 0:39:35.800 --> 0:39:40.759 said Mark, Robert, go on with it. We're going to 0:39:40.800 --> 0:39:44.680 have this guy. Either you do this or we'll get 0:39:44.680 --> 0:39:46.920 somebody else to do it, or however it was phrased 0:39:48.480 --> 0:39:53.279 so Suddenly Robert's attitude changes quite a bit and he 0:39:53.360 --> 0:39:54.920 comes up with a deal, and I can tell you 0:39:54.960 --> 0:39:58.040 what the terms were. It was ten percent of the 0:39:58.080 --> 0:39:59.279 gross of publishing. 0:40:00.560 --> 0:40:01.040 It was. 0:40:02.840 --> 0:40:07.600 Fifteen percent of the gross of records. There was nothing 0:40:07.640 --> 0:40:11.760 in it about soundtracks, there was nothing in it about 0:40:12.520 --> 0:40:23.880 producer work. And the publishing was fifteen. That was the start. 0:40:24.560 --> 0:40:26.760 But you said the publishing was ten. In the publishing 0:40:26.880 --> 0:40:27.320 was fifteen. 0:40:27.840 --> 0:40:31.760 I beg your pardon. The publishing started off at ten, 0:40:33.160 --> 0:40:39.960 that's right. What was live live was fifteen. Now in 0:40:40.000 --> 0:40:44.960 my head, I immediately saw a problem because if I 0:40:45.120 --> 0:40:49.640 used an agent, if I switched hats and I became 0:40:49.719 --> 0:40:54.319 their manager and I used a third party agent, that 0:40:54.440 --> 0:40:56.839 was probably going to be another ten. So twenty five 0:40:56.880 --> 0:41:01.680 percent off the top of live work was probably going 0:41:01.719 --> 0:41:05.160 to push that live work into a loss if it 0:41:05.200 --> 0:41:08.960 wasn't already in a loss. And if you've got a 0:41:09.000 --> 0:41:16.000 loss going on, you've got a potential problem. I got 0:41:16.000 --> 0:41:19.000 around the problem in a way by I didn't leave NAMS, 0:41:19.680 --> 0:41:26.600 so I was using their phones, their staff, secretarial, their infrastructure, 0:41:26.680 --> 0:41:28.759 and EMS was a big agency. They would be the 0:41:28.800 --> 0:41:31.760 equivalent of back then, they would have been the William 0:41:31.800 --> 0:41:35.879 Morris or CIA of London, and I was a big 0:41:35.880 --> 0:41:42.120 shit there. So we started on that deal because I 0:41:42.120 --> 0:41:47.080 didn't really he wasn't giving me a choice. I had 0:41:47.120 --> 0:41:50.560 a lawyer do my end of it. But that was 0:41:50.640 --> 0:41:56.360 really just crossing t's and dotting eyes when I as 0:41:56.480 --> 0:41:58.960 time progressed, I'm just going to get ahead of myself 0:41:59.000 --> 0:42:06.959 slightly in this ology. That deal changed and I did. 0:42:07.560 --> 0:42:10.759 I did all the record deals myself, I did all 0:42:10.800 --> 0:42:16.279 the publishing deals myself. I booked every show everywhere myself 0:42:16.520 --> 0:42:23.440 except for the USA, and I did every merchandising deal myself. 0:42:23.880 --> 0:42:29.640 I did every film soundtrack deal myself, on the basis 0:42:29.719 --> 0:42:39.480 that nobody knows anything, so why not. And the deal 0:42:39.800 --> 0:42:43.320 over the next couple of years changed so that the 0:42:43.440 --> 0:42:56.880 publishing became twenty percent. Yes, yes, oh yes. The records 0:42:58.160 --> 0:43:02.440 stayed at fifteen, but Mark started getting a producer chunk 0:43:02.480 --> 0:43:03.719 and I got twenty of that. 0:43:06.680 --> 0:43:07.840 And the live. 0:43:09.360 --> 0:43:12.600 Kind of wobbled up and down according to how profitable 0:43:12.640 --> 0:43:15.840 the tours had been. But just before the Brothers in 0:43:16.000 --> 0:43:18.200 Arms tour, which I'm sure you're going to get to, 0:43:21.520 --> 0:43:24.279 Mark and John called me over to the rehearsal room 0:43:26.000 --> 0:43:29.040 and Mark said to me, he said, you book all 0:43:29.080 --> 0:43:32.400 our dates, don't you? And I'm thinking, God, is he 0:43:32.440 --> 0:43:36.239 only just noticed? And I went yeah, and he said, 0:43:36.239 --> 0:43:38.839 and we don't pay for it, do we? And I went, well, 0:43:38.880 --> 0:43:41.880 it's just part of the package. He said, well, we 0:43:41.960 --> 0:43:45.600 think you should get an extra five percent and I 0:43:45.640 --> 0:43:50.920 went done. And that was the deal I ended up on. 0:43:58.440 --> 0:44:01.880 Okay, a couple of questions. When you were in Los Angeles, 0:44:01.920 --> 0:44:04.359 did you finalize the deal with Warner Brothers? 0:44:04.719 --> 0:44:06.520 Pretty much? Yeah, pretty much? 0:44:06.520 --> 0:44:10.560 Okay, And in this agreement hang on. 0:44:10.640 --> 0:44:13.960 Sorry to intruct you, we didn't finalize the commercial terms, 0:44:15.920 --> 0:44:18.279 and we ended up with a better royalty rate than 0:44:18.400 --> 0:44:21.360 we got we're getting from a phonograph. Because I was, 0:44:22.239 --> 0:44:27.600 I was involved. This all sounds very grandiose, but I mean, 0:44:27.760 --> 0:44:31.000 I just I mean, I came back to the what 0:44:31.040 --> 0:44:34.880 I said to you a few seconds ago. Back then, No, 0:44:35.080 --> 0:44:41.080 Don Passman hadn't written his book, bless him, so you 0:44:41.320 --> 0:44:44.040 just could kind of make it up as you went along. 0:44:45.000 --> 0:44:48.640 And what and I do. And for a manager, leverage 0:44:48.840 --> 0:44:53.480 is everything, but leverage in part it is not just commercial. 0:44:53.880 --> 0:44:58.080 It's your personality. It's the way you approach things. It's 0:44:58.160 --> 0:45:02.120 knowing when to say no, went to say yes, my 0:45:02.239 --> 0:45:05.080 Austin once said, not my Austin David Berman, who was 0:45:05.080 --> 0:45:07.880 the head of his business affairs for many years. David 0:45:07.920 --> 0:45:11.080 said to me, I'll tell you. I'll tell you this 0:45:11.440 --> 0:45:13.840 to my own benefit. He said, you know your most 0:45:13.880 --> 0:45:18.799 favorite manager. Well, well I am. That's very nice, I said, 0:45:18.840 --> 0:45:21.719 any particular reason. He said, because whenever you ask us 0:45:21.719 --> 0:45:25.719 for something, you give us something in return. He said. 0:45:25.840 --> 0:45:28.880 There are people in this town, meaning Los Angeles, and 0:45:28.880 --> 0:45:32.000 he said that I'm having a couple of lawyers, attorneys 0:45:32.040 --> 0:45:36.520 in mind, who's who think that the best deal that 0:45:36.560 --> 0:45:39.400 they can get for their artist means that we're making 0:45:39.440 --> 0:45:45.000 a loss on every unit we sell. And I said, 0:45:45.000 --> 0:45:49.239 but that's ridiculous, that's just stupid. You have to let 0:45:49.280 --> 0:45:53.600 the other person have a fair crack. Some of the 0:45:53.600 --> 0:45:56.319 big record companies don't believe in that philosophy. But I've 0:45:56.360 --> 0:45:59.759 always believed in that philosophy. I've given promoters money back. 0:46:02.239 --> 0:46:05.919 I actually I cut a merchant I readd a merchandising 0:46:05.920 --> 0:46:09.919 deal with somebody. When the vat the sales tax rate 0:46:09.960 --> 0:46:12.040 went up in this country by two and a half percent. 0:46:12.320 --> 0:46:14.080 I rang the guy up and I said I'm dropping 0:46:14.160 --> 0:46:17.040 your deal by two and a half percent. And when 0:46:17.040 --> 0:46:19.680 he got off the floor, he said why, I said, 0:46:19.719 --> 0:46:21.680 I don't want that to be passed on to the public. 0:46:23.440 --> 0:46:28.080 Okay, you made these deals at low royalty rates? Did 0:46:28.120 --> 0:46:30.000 you renegotiate and when. 0:46:31.200 --> 0:46:34.080 Well, the Warner's deal wasn't that lower rule too rate. 0:46:34.560 --> 0:46:38.600 But the original Phonogram deal, which I hadn't done, which 0:46:38.680 --> 0:46:41.200 I told you about at the beginning, that was pretty low. 0:46:42.360 --> 0:46:44.360 Although you know you have to put all this in 0:46:44.480 --> 0:46:49.480 the context of the time. You can't in twenty twenty 0:46:49.480 --> 0:46:51.839 four look back and say, well, Elvis Presley had a 0:46:51.840 --> 0:46:56.960 crap record deal. Yeah, because I mean, I remember Wexler 0:46:57.040 --> 0:46:59.440 saying to me, because Wexley was very proud in a 0:46:59.480 --> 0:47:03.800 strange sort of way of the way that they exploited 0:47:04.400 --> 0:47:08.520 the artists on Atlantic, particularly the black artists, and they 0:47:08.560 --> 0:47:10.680 paid He said to me, I don't know how true 0:47:10.680 --> 0:47:12.680 this is. He said to me one day that they 0:47:12.719 --> 0:47:16.239 had paid Ray Charles thirty dollars flat to record. What 0:47:16.320 --> 0:47:22.480 did I say? And then you look at they sold 0:47:22.640 --> 0:47:27.560 Atlantic to Wea for I think seventeen million dollars, and 0:47:27.640 --> 0:47:32.279 I was just astonished that it was so low and 0:47:32.320 --> 0:47:40.360 Western's response was capital Games, Capital Games rubbish. So in 0:47:40.480 --> 0:47:46.960 answer to your question, I reegotiated the record side with 0:47:48.280 --> 0:47:53.400 the PolyGram countries the Phonogram deal every single time we 0:47:53.480 --> 0:47:58.319 put a record out. Every time. I did not do 0:47:58.400 --> 0:48:02.239 that with Warner Brothers. I waited. I just had a 0:48:02.360 --> 0:48:06.560 sense that we were going to have one day a 0:48:06.680 --> 0:48:11.359 humongous record in America, and since we weren't on a 0:48:11.360 --> 0:48:14.560 bad deal, we were on sixteen percent. I think it 0:48:14.680 --> 0:48:25.360 was I didn't feel the kind of almost sounds sounds 0:48:25.400 --> 0:48:28.000 a bit pretentiousness. I didn't feel a kind of moral 0:48:28.120 --> 0:48:31.480 pressure to be pushing them. And I have to say, 0:48:33.360 --> 0:48:35.200 sort of the listeners to this may think this is 0:48:35.239 --> 0:48:38.400 a very strange motivation. I really liked the people at 0:48:38.440 --> 0:48:44.879 Warner Brothers, and somehow that crept into my I would can't. 0:48:44.960 --> 0:48:47.200 I mean, they were a big corporation, et cetera. But 0:48:47.239 --> 0:48:51.000 I really like mo. I love Lenny. I mean, he's 0:48:51.080 --> 0:48:54.960 just he's just adorable, used to used to play some 0:48:55.080 --> 0:48:58.480 terrible jokes on it. But and and all all the 0:48:58.480 --> 0:49:02.960 people I dealt with, and one person in particular, Carl Scott, 0:49:03.520 --> 0:49:05.880 who at the time was head of artist relations there. 0:49:06.680 --> 0:49:10.960 He was a huge supporter of the band and of 0:49:11.000 --> 0:49:17.239 me personally, and he and people in his department. Girl 0:49:17.280 --> 0:49:20.960 called Ellen Darst, another girl called Karen Kaplan who went 0:49:21.040 --> 0:49:23.800 on to She left and she worked for Paul McGuinness 0:49:23.840 --> 0:49:28.960 and you too for many years. They were incredibly supportive 0:49:30.640 --> 0:49:32.719 and I can't remember his name, but the guy was 0:49:32.760 --> 0:49:35.440 head of merchandising had the best split in town. 0:49:37.440 --> 0:49:42.400 Okay, you talk about giving to get when you renegotiated 0:49:42.440 --> 0:49:46.359 with Phonogram, what'd you give them for a higher royalty rate? 0:49:46.960 --> 0:49:51.960 Well, the only thing you can give them is extra records. 0:49:53.239 --> 0:49:57.680 That's all they're I mean, you can say, oh, you know, 0:49:57.840 --> 0:49:59.840 we'll do I won't, I won't be nasty to the 0:50:01.200 --> 0:50:04.000 but it's basically you give them more product. So it's 0:50:04.120 --> 0:50:07.920 very important when you're an at starting out that you 0:50:08.080 --> 0:50:11.399 end up by chance or if you want to call it, 0:50:11.440 --> 0:50:16.360 with the label that is right for you, because whatever happens, 0:50:16.400 --> 0:50:20.680 and certainly now since nearly all record companies are essentially 0:50:20.880 --> 0:50:28.120 corporate unless they're specialized specialty labels, the turnover in personnel 0:50:29.360 --> 0:50:34.520 is an issue I got through in twenty five years 0:50:34.760 --> 0:50:40.560 over twelve managing directors in the UK Phonogram Company, which 0:50:40.600 --> 0:50:45.799 is a terrible way to run a business in the 0:50:45.960 --> 0:50:52.200 States until the time Warner merger and the fallout from that. 0:50:54.640 --> 0:50:59.799 It was basically Moe Austin's company, and he ran it 0:50:59.840 --> 0:51:04.000 in a very particular way, and he was incredibly accessible. 0:51:05.760 --> 0:51:09.560 His staff loved him. I mean most of his staff 0:51:09.600 --> 0:51:13.640 would have crawled over broken glass, you know, Romoe. And 0:51:14.000 --> 0:51:20.000 he was an infinitely interesting person to spend time with 0:51:20.920 --> 0:51:25.719 if I got him on Frank Sinatra anecdotes, Wow, fantastic. 0:51:26.880 --> 0:51:30.880 So I had a different philosophy with the American company 0:51:31.080 --> 0:51:33.960 than I did with the rest of the world. Now 0:51:35.320 --> 0:51:39.719 I should just explain that we were signed to Phonogram UK. 0:51:42.480 --> 0:51:46.200 Phonogram was part of PolyGram, which at the time was 0:51:46.200 --> 0:51:49.839 owned by Phillips and Semens until Phillips bought Semens out, 0:51:51.120 --> 0:51:55.120 and Phillips being a Dutch company, they were based in Eindhoven. 0:51:56.000 --> 0:51:59.960 They had an operation in a place in Holland call 0:52:00.239 --> 0:52:06.720 barn baa Rn, which was a bit like going to prison, 0:52:06.960 --> 0:52:09.879 a prisoner of war camp in the Second World War. 0:52:10.000 --> 0:52:14.239 This was the worst atmosphere. It was a whole lot 0:52:14.280 --> 0:52:19.680 of buildings connected by tunnels underneath, except it wasn't Las Vegas, 0:52:20.600 --> 0:52:27.000 and they were supposed to coordinate, coordinate all of their territories. 0:52:29.640 --> 0:52:35.360 They had companies in most parts of the world, but 0:52:35.680 --> 0:52:39.600 not everywhere. For instance, they didn't have a company in 0:52:39.719 --> 0:52:44.719 South Africa. They had a licensee. They were so totally 0:52:44.840 --> 0:52:50.080 hopeless at coordinating these people. I couldn't even get sales figures. 0:52:50.960 --> 0:52:55.080 So I started dealing with all of these companies direct. 0:52:56.239 --> 0:53:02.239 I just went round this operation in. Of course, the 0:53:02.280 --> 0:53:05.840 people in Holland were extremely ticked off, but the managing 0:53:05.880 --> 0:53:09.759 directors and marketing heads of all of the other companies 0:53:11.480 --> 0:53:15.759 just thought this, Wow, this is great. Why because politically 0:53:15.840 --> 0:53:18.920 within that setup, the fact that they were dealing direct 0:53:18.960 --> 0:53:21.240 with the manager of one of the biggest acts, which 0:53:21.280 --> 0:53:27.480 became the biggest act, and they became my friends, you know, 0:53:28.160 --> 0:53:32.480 so they would It was almost like I was giving 0:53:32.480 --> 0:53:37.640 them political ammunition for their own personal ambition. But he 0:53:37.719 --> 0:53:40.000 got the job done. That was all I was concerned about. 0:53:40.120 --> 0:53:44.560 I wanted to know what I used to make them 0:53:44.640 --> 0:53:49.400 give me. Marketing plans, sales projections, weekly sales figures, the 0:53:49.440 --> 0:53:53.439 whole lot. Not so much because I'm sitting at home 0:53:53.480 --> 0:53:59.680 every weekend reading all this stuff, but because many many 0:53:59.840 --> 0:54:01.640 this She's got nothing to do with what we're talking about, 0:54:01.719 --> 0:54:04.439 but really a really quick story. I did a deal 0:54:04.680 --> 0:54:06.839 many many years later for Mark to do a piece 0:54:06.840 --> 0:54:09.799 of music for a film called Color of Money that 0:54:10.040 --> 0:54:14.320 was Martin Scorsese film that was being distributed by Disney. 0:54:15.239 --> 0:54:17.640 And I got into a huge row with the lawyer 0:54:17.680 --> 0:54:21.000 at Disney because their attitude was we will own everything 0:54:21.000 --> 0:54:23.799 and you will own nothing, and my attitude was, no, 0:54:24.080 --> 0:54:26.680 you will own nothing and we will own everything, which 0:54:26.680 --> 0:54:32.440 is how it ended up. And somebody there who was 0:54:32.520 --> 0:54:34.799 head of script development who I happened to know go 0:54:34.920 --> 0:54:39.600 called Jane Rosenthal. She works, She's run some Tribeca studios 0:54:39.640 --> 0:54:42.800 for Robert de Niro now it has for many years. 0:54:44.520 --> 0:54:50.640 She called me up after a particularly how can I 0:54:50.680 --> 0:54:56.440 put it vicious email to this guy in the legal 0:54:56.440 --> 0:54:59.840 department and she said, are you having a problem with sounds? 0:55:00.480 --> 0:55:05.239 And I went, no, nothing I can't handle. And I said, 0:55:05.239 --> 0:55:08.680 how do you know about that? She said no, At Disney, 0:55:10.200 --> 0:55:14.719 every head of department is copying in on every ingoing 0:55:14.880 --> 0:55:21.759 and outgoing communication every day. And Michael remind me of 0:55:21.800 --> 0:55:26.560 his name, head of Disney, Eisner, Right, Michael Eisler is 0:55:26.680 --> 0:55:32.960 copying in on everything. And I just started laughing. I said, 0:55:33.600 --> 0:55:38.200 Michael Eisner can't possibly read everything that's going in and 0:55:38.239 --> 0:55:41.799 out every day, and she said no, but nobody knows 0:55:41.880 --> 0:55:46.120 what he does read, so it has the same effect. 0:55:47.560 --> 0:55:52.520 So anyway, I was basically but this is by album two, 0:55:52.680 --> 0:55:56.080 certainly by album. By making movies, I was dealing with 0:55:56.120 --> 0:56:00.640 all the Phonogram companies direct everywhere. And when I say everywhere, 0:56:01.200 --> 0:56:08.200 I dealt with the company in Israel, say, or a 0:56:08.239 --> 0:56:14.720 company in Malta or New Zealand. To me, every country 0:56:14.840 --> 0:56:18.759 was as important as every other one. And Brothers in 0:56:18.920 --> 0:56:22.719 Arms sold over four hundred and fifty thousand copies in 0:56:22.760 --> 0:56:28.879 New Zealand. The soundtrack to Last Exit to Brooklyn, one 0:56:28.880 --> 0:56:32.239 of our more obscure items, sold over one hundred and 0:56:32.280 --> 0:56:41.759 fifty thousand in South Korea, So don't overlook everywhere. My 0:56:41.840 --> 0:56:45.719 philosophy was, I'm going to make this act huge and 0:56:45.760 --> 0:56:48.239 they're going to be huge worldwide, and they're going to 0:56:48.239 --> 0:56:52.080 have a long career because I considered myself to be 0:56:52.200 --> 0:56:56.719 one of them, and in fairness, they felt the same 0:56:56.760 --> 0:56:57.160 about me. 0:56:59.120 --> 0:57:03.680 Okay, now it comes time for the second album. How 0:57:03.680 --> 0:57:07.600 do you cut it in the South? And you know, 0:57:07.680 --> 0:57:11.000 in America, the albums came out almost back to back. Yes, 0:57:11.200 --> 0:57:13.920 So what was the experience of the second record from 0:57:13.920 --> 0:57:15.320 the inside? 0:57:17.240 --> 0:57:26.560 Very good question. Because of this split record deal, by accident, 0:57:27.840 --> 0:57:32.480 we ended up with a situation where the second record 0:57:32.880 --> 0:57:39.440 was recorded with Wexler and Barry Beckett at Compass Points 0:57:39.480 --> 0:57:45.880 Studios in Nasaw Chris Blackwell's place, before the first record 0:57:46.360 --> 0:57:52.040 had come out in the US. So we were in 0:57:52.080 --> 0:57:57.640 this time lag as far as the US was concerned, 0:58:00.080 --> 0:58:05.880 and having had an album that was very, very hot. 0:58:06.520 --> 0:58:10.000 The problem, the problem with all first releases by any 0:58:10.080 --> 0:58:14.360 act is if you get your first record away, it 0:58:14.440 --> 0:58:17.080 might seem fantastic at the time, and it is, and 0:58:17.200 --> 0:58:21.440 it jumps a lot of barriers in one go. But 0:58:21.560 --> 0:58:25.600 then you've got this situation that you're alluding to, which 0:58:25.680 --> 0:58:28.440 is the second one. I have Alanis Morrissette in mind 0:58:28.880 --> 0:58:36.760 actually at this point, so we had Wexler, had got 0:58:36.760 --> 0:58:41.160 his claws in. We go off to and he and 0:58:41.200 --> 0:58:44.560 he's set, you know, he's laying out. We're going to 0:58:44.680 --> 0:58:46.880 go to the Bahamas. I mean, none of us have 0:58:47.000 --> 0:58:48.040 been to the Caribbean. 0:58:48.920 --> 0:58:49.360 We hadn't. 0:58:49.400 --> 0:58:52.120 We hadn't we hadn't been to the south coast of England. 0:58:53.000 --> 0:58:55.160 We're going to be there, you're going to live here, 0:58:55.200 --> 0:58:57.240 You're going to be We're going to brew on the 0:58:57.280 --> 0:59:00.600 whole thing. And we fell for it hookline, and so 0:59:00.640 --> 0:59:06.880 we went off to Compass Point and we made that. 0:59:07.200 --> 0:59:09.680 You see, the Dye Strikes records were made very quickly. 0:59:10.360 --> 0:59:14.280 First one twelve days including mixing, second one three weeks 0:59:14.320 --> 0:59:18.120 including mixing. So we had a record ready to go 0:59:18.320 --> 0:59:24.240 and the PolyGram territories were gagging for this record. Meanwhile, 0:59:24.600 --> 0:59:30.960 the Warners people were not gagging for it. They wanted 0:59:31.000 --> 0:59:35.760 to release at least they wanted to release Down to 0:59:35.840 --> 0:59:39.720 the Waterline as an aside single and probably another track. 0:59:40.560 --> 0:59:47.240 And it all led to a very embarrassing meeting in London. 0:59:48.240 --> 0:59:53.320 Moe was there, rush Thyret was there, the Polyglots were there, 0:59:53.520 --> 0:59:58.080 I don't remember which, and myself, And as this meeting 0:59:58.160 --> 1:00:01.320 was progressing, I suddenly realized that the casting vote was 1:00:01.320 --> 1:00:04.480 coming down to me. And of course I had the band. 1:00:04.520 --> 1:00:06.680 When a band's made a record, they want the record out. 1:00:07.800 --> 1:00:10.760 Well not in Brian Ferry's case, but everybody else wants 1:00:10.840 --> 1:00:16.680 it out. And I could see both sides of the equation. 1:00:16.920 --> 1:00:20.520 I'd already booked or put in place, or I could 1:00:20.600 --> 1:00:24.480 have changed it all a whole British and European tour 1:00:25.480 --> 1:00:32.200 to push this second record, you know, off along and 1:00:33.960 --> 1:00:38.640 that meeting we made a mistake and I absolutely take 1:00:38.680 --> 1:00:42.440 responsibility for it. It doesn't matter now, but we should have waited. 1:00:43.720 --> 1:00:46.000 But the band now now we have to have it out. 1:00:46.080 --> 1:00:48.560 They were already playing most of the songs on it. 1:00:49.240 --> 1:00:51.240 A good number of the songs on the second record 1:00:51.240 --> 1:00:55.600 were played on the first American tour because interesting thing 1:00:55.640 --> 1:00:58.280 about America, I don't know if it's still true, but 1:00:58.400 --> 1:01:02.720 the audiences were completely to do stuff that they'd never heard. 1:01:04.080 --> 1:01:08.000 You know, in Manchester they want to hear the hits, 1:01:08.800 --> 1:01:14.920 but they didn't care about that in Chicago. And we 1:01:15.080 --> 1:01:21.200 decided to go with that second record in the autumn 1:01:21.280 --> 1:01:22.480 of seventeen. 1:01:23.200 --> 1:01:23.360 Was it. 1:01:23.400 --> 1:01:26.480 I can't remember when it came out, yes, late seventy nine, 1:01:28.120 --> 1:01:30.760 which and we had to do it worldwide because of 1:01:31.200 --> 1:01:37.200 what we're called parallel imports. Back then, the Europeans would 1:01:37.240 --> 1:01:43.480 deliberately try and import records into the US and I 1:01:43.760 --> 1:01:47.600 just wish we hadn't done that. It just it created 1:01:47.640 --> 1:01:54.240 a bad atmosphere with the senior management owners, which took 1:01:54.320 --> 1:01:59.600 quite a bit of recovering, and I just instinctively was 1:01:59.640 --> 1:02:04.919 thinking this is wrong. But I didn't really have enough 1:02:04.960 --> 1:02:12.200 experience at the time. I didn't I had never worked 1:02:12.200 --> 1:02:14.960 with an act or a record that had been a 1:02:15.160 --> 1:02:21.160 multiple singles record. In the UK, if you put out 1:02:21.200 --> 1:02:25.200 an album, if you got one hit off it, you 1:02:25.240 --> 1:02:28.080 were doing really well, and if you got two, that 1:02:28.240 --> 1:02:34.080 was a miracle. Most acts didn't. Everybody was recording much 1:02:34.080 --> 1:02:37.720 more quickly than they are now, and stuff was coming 1:02:37.760 --> 1:02:40.720 out faster in this marketplace. 1:02:41.720 --> 1:02:48.320 Okay, from my personal experience, I didn't like the second 1:02:48.360 --> 1:02:51.560 record as much as the first. Not that it was bad. 1:02:52.120 --> 1:02:55.960 You had this release thing. It wasn't really like a 1:02:56.280 --> 1:03:01.200 downhill slide, but there wasn't any increase in career momentum. 1:03:01.240 --> 1:03:01.680 Correct. 1:03:01.960 --> 1:03:04.480 What was it like from on the inside. 1:03:04.120 --> 1:03:07.240 Yeah, well you've yeah, that's the that's the nail that 1:03:07.280 --> 1:03:13.040 you've squarely hit. Like many second albums by acts that 1:03:13.120 --> 1:03:23.120 have big first albums, there was a I can't speak 1:03:23.160 --> 1:03:28.480 for Mark personally, but he was using material that he 1:03:28.600 --> 1:03:33.720 had rejected for the first one. He was being forced 1:03:35.800 --> 1:03:38.360 not the right word, but he had He was having 1:03:38.400 --> 1:03:43.480 to write on the tour bus in the hotel room, 1:03:44.560 --> 1:03:49.160 the hour, the amount of time. You know, this is 1:03:49.200 --> 1:03:55.120 all boxed in with shows, rehearsals, It's boxed in by interviews, 1:03:55.560 --> 1:04:00.480 Telly's videos, and it was very much boxed in by 1:04:00.880 --> 1:04:04.680 the personal relationship situation that was going on in the 1:04:04.720 --> 1:04:09.520 group off the back of this huge first record. Because 1:04:09.560 --> 1:04:19.040 that record, that first one, none of us quite knew 1:04:19.080 --> 1:04:23.080 how to deal with it. It was and the way 1:04:23.120 --> 1:04:29.320 it led to the issues between Mark and his younger brother, 1:04:29.400 --> 1:04:36.200 which were already pretty fragile, really became quite difficult during 1:04:36.240 --> 1:04:36.920 that period. 1:04:38.840 --> 1:04:39.160 And I. 1:04:41.400 --> 1:04:44.720 So so that record, and that record was when we 1:04:44.800 --> 1:04:47.160 got there was quite an interesting little thing which might 1:04:49.520 --> 1:04:53.680 address what you just asked me. When we got out 1:04:53.720 --> 1:05:03.840 to Compass point, Uh, Distraits did not generally do demos, 1:05:05.040 --> 1:05:10.440 so Jerry Wexler didn't know what the songs were. So 1:05:10.600 --> 1:05:14.800 when we got there, I remember Mark and Jerry and 1:05:14.840 --> 1:05:17.920 I must have been there, Mark kind of running the 1:05:17.960 --> 1:05:20.760 songs down, just plunk in on a guitar, acoustic guitar 1:05:20.880 --> 1:05:24.440 or whatever. And the next day was quite interesting to 1:05:24.520 --> 1:05:28.040 us because we had never been worked with an American 1:05:28.400 --> 1:05:33.640 record company person, let alone a you know, famed legendary 1:05:33.760 --> 1:05:37.280 producer and where's the saying to Mark, what strings did 1:05:37.320 --> 1:05:40.479 you use on the first album? How tar did you use? 1:05:40.920 --> 1:05:45.960 What amplifier, what amplifier settings? All of this kind of stuff, 1:05:47.560 --> 1:05:50.200 And it suddenly occurred, I think, to most of it, well, 1:05:50.240 --> 1:05:53.120 certainly to Mark and I that he was trying to 1:05:53.240 --> 1:05:58.480 copy the first one, but he wanted the sound to be, 1:05:58.520 --> 1:06:00.680 as he put it, we're going to make a record 1:06:00.720 --> 1:06:06.800 that's you know, good for American radio. So what he 1:06:06.840 --> 1:06:12.520 was trying to do was kind of chip off the 1:06:12.520 --> 1:06:16.640 the rougher edges and that's how it sounded. Yeah, which 1:06:16.680 --> 1:06:25.919 gave the first one it's kind of spirit. And that's 1:06:26.040 --> 1:06:26.640 what happened. 1:06:34.880 --> 1:06:38.760 Okay, So before the next album, David is no longer 1:06:38.760 --> 1:06:39.360 in the band. 1:06:40.400 --> 1:06:45.120 No, no, sorry, you're wrong. He left during the recording 1:06:45.160 --> 1:06:46.120 of the third one. 1:06:46.600 --> 1:06:48.280 Okay, how does that happen? 1:06:50.680 --> 1:06:53.760 Well, the momentum of this thing, I mean, notwithstanding what 1:06:53.800 --> 1:06:56.480 you made your comment about the if you like the 1:06:56.600 --> 1:07:00.920 artistry of the second record, the second record just certainly 1:07:00.960 --> 1:07:04.240 over here and in Europe and Australasia and so on, 1:07:04.960 --> 1:07:08.120 just came out of the you know, like a shot 1:07:08.160 --> 1:07:11.320 out of a cannon. I mean, we had that record 1:07:11.360 --> 1:07:13.920 went straight in at number one in Germany and the 1:07:13.960 --> 1:07:17.920 first album was at number two. That kind of thing. 1:07:19.000 --> 1:07:28.040 So the Communicate record was successful, not as successful as 1:07:28.040 --> 1:07:32.080 the first one, but it was. It sold in its 1:07:32.400 --> 1:07:37.760 lifestyme lifetime eight eight million copies, first one in its 1:07:37.840 --> 1:07:46.280 lifetime fifteen, so about half. And within the band myself, 1:07:46.960 --> 1:07:54.080 we all understood that there was a danger of being 1:07:54.080 --> 1:07:58.600 a one hit wonder kind of thing, and that record, 1:07:58.600 --> 1:08:02.280 the second record, didn't have have a hit single on it, 1:08:02.320 --> 1:08:06.360 and back then, hit singles were what you needed, so 1:08:07.440 --> 1:08:11.680 we didn't have a songs of swing on it. I 1:08:11.680 --> 1:08:13.880 can't even remember what the single was that came off. 1:08:13.920 --> 1:08:15.480 It was it Once upon a Time in the West, 1:08:15.640 --> 1:08:24.200 I can't remember, and it kind of I mean, we 1:08:24.240 --> 1:08:29.240 were touring it and we were selling out shows, partly 1:08:29.280 --> 1:08:31.880 because I always tried to keep the shows at the 1:08:32.000 --> 1:08:35.599 right level for the time. So by that time we 1:08:35.600 --> 1:08:39.400 were starting to do arenas, we were up from doing 1:08:39.720 --> 1:08:49.720 big theaters. If you like David Knopfler, I'm picking this 1:08:49.880 --> 1:08:58.960 up from interviews i've seen him do since he said 1:08:58.960 --> 1:09:01.439 to John Ellslie one day, I remember this. He said 1:09:01.479 --> 1:09:05.479 something like, it wasn't supposed to be like this, and 1:09:05.560 --> 1:09:08.200 what he meant by that was he wasn't supposed to 1:09:08.240 --> 1:09:13.160 be as successful. And I remember getting into a bit 1:09:13.160 --> 1:09:15.360 of a fight with him about this. I said, well, 1:09:15.360 --> 1:09:16.880 what the fuck do you want? You want me to 1:09:16.920 --> 1:09:20.920 make it less successful. He got really pissed off about 1:09:21.000 --> 1:09:23.920 the amount of money that Warner Brothers were spending on 1:09:24.000 --> 1:09:27.880 independent promotion, and he's saying stuff to me, like in 1:09:27.880 --> 1:09:32.599 front of the others, like they're criminals. And I went, yeah, 1:09:32.640 --> 1:09:36.160 So he says, you should be trying to stop you 1:09:36.160 --> 1:09:38.599 should stop it. I said, I'm trying to get them 1:09:38.600 --> 1:09:42.519 to spend more. And we got into a really and 1:09:42.960 --> 1:09:45.679 in the background I can hear Mark going shut up, 1:09:46.520 --> 1:09:54.720 shut the shut up. So David's philosophy about what dire 1:09:54.760 --> 1:10:00.599 straits could would and could and should be, we actually 1:10:00.640 --> 1:10:05.600 defined what that was. What it wasn't was to be successful, 1:10:05.880 --> 1:10:10.400 to have chart records, to be on the David Letterman Show, 1:10:10.479 --> 1:10:14.800 or whoever it was at the time, that kind of thing. 1:10:15.880 --> 1:10:20.640 And the two brothers. Some people in families get on 1:10:20.720 --> 1:10:26.439 great and some don't. And they didn't and don't as 1:10:26.439 --> 1:10:28.280 far as I know, they have not spoken to each 1:10:28.280 --> 1:10:34.240 other in thirty years. Wow, which is a shame. It's silly. 1:10:35.400 --> 1:10:38.479 Was David pushed or did he jump? And if he 1:10:38.600 --> 1:10:45.560 was pushed, who told them? 1:10:46.080 --> 1:10:48.320 You did say this was going to be deep, right, 1:10:49.000 --> 1:10:58.120 So we go into the making movies record and I 1:10:59.120 --> 1:11:05.360 one very single thing happened Mark Mark expanded the lineup 1:11:05.439 --> 1:11:11.759 of the group to include keyboards. Now in the first instance, well, 1:11:12.800 --> 1:11:16.080 he and I went to New York in January of 1:11:16.160 --> 1:11:20.200 nineteen eighty and we were going to meet with John 1:11:20.320 --> 1:11:27.360 Landaut to produce that third record. And John, who I 1:11:27.400 --> 1:11:30.920 have to say I really like, showed up for the 1:11:31.000 --> 1:11:35.040 meeting on the wrong day, which did not auger well 1:11:35.880 --> 1:11:39.280 because his pa had put the diary entry in wrong, 1:11:39.400 --> 1:11:43.400 which apparently she regularly did. I guess she's not working 1:11:43.400 --> 1:11:47.080 for him now. So he shows So we sit and wait. 1:11:47.400 --> 1:11:51.200 We were staying at the Mayflower Hotel upon the Central 1:11:51.240 --> 1:11:55.160 Park West, and we sit and we wait. No John, 1:11:55.280 --> 1:11:57.920 So I ring the office and he comes on the 1:11:57.960 --> 1:12:00.439 phone and I said, John, we've got a meeting with you. 1:12:00.720 --> 1:12:04.280 There's a silence, and then I hear a shit, she's 1:12:04.400 --> 1:12:10.040 done it again. He came the next day and he 1:12:10.200 --> 1:12:14.160 was making The River with Bruce and Chuck Blockin and 1:12:14.439 --> 1:12:21.200 twenty seven other producers and he was shattered. I mean 1:12:21.240 --> 1:12:25.280 he looked on he looked unwell, and we got him 1:12:25.320 --> 1:12:27.840 a cup of tea and a bun and I said 1:12:27.880 --> 1:12:30.120 to him, are you all right? Went I didn't get 1:12:30.120 --> 1:12:34.720 into I didn't get home till five am, and we 1:12:34.800 --> 1:12:39.519 had this conversation and basically he could not fit our 1:12:39.640 --> 1:12:43.439 record well. He didn't have a schedule, he had no 1:12:43.560 --> 1:12:45.960 idea when the River was going to be finished. They'd 1:12:46.000 --> 1:12:49.720 already been working on it for about a year. And 1:12:49.760 --> 1:12:52.160 if I remember correctly, it's a double album. I think 1:12:52.160 --> 1:12:55.720 it was a double album. Yeah. So, and they were 1:12:55.800 --> 1:12:57.760 up at the power station, which is where we used 1:12:57.800 --> 1:13:09.280 to work. So he mentioned Jimmy Iven and when we 1:13:09.280 --> 1:13:13.840 were doing the Communicator, the play on music that the 1:13:13.840 --> 1:13:18.080 band used to bring them on stage was because the 1:13:18.200 --> 1:13:24.799 night which Jimmy of course had produced with Patti Smith. 1:13:27.040 --> 1:13:31.960 And we're sitting there and so again, long story short, 1:13:32.360 --> 1:13:37.360 I got hold of Jimmy on John's recommendation, and a 1:13:37.439 --> 1:13:42.200 small man dressed entirely in yellow with a yellow cap 1:13:42.320 --> 1:13:48.679 and yellow shades in a yellow car arrives and hops 1:13:48.720 --> 1:13:53.479 out and starts talking like he's been swimming in shark 1:13:53.560 --> 1:13:57.599 infested waters. And one of them's got his balls. Hi, 1:13:57.800 --> 1:14:04.760 how you doing, Jimmy, And he's like, I mean, I 1:14:04.760 --> 1:14:05.799 thought he was on speed. 1:14:06.120 --> 1:14:06.559 It wasn't. 1:14:06.600 --> 1:14:11.360 That's just his personality to Blessing and the two of them, 1:14:11.920 --> 1:14:15.960 we all got on. He recommended the power station. We 1:14:16.000 --> 1:14:18.040 went up to the power station to have to check 1:14:18.080 --> 1:14:20.960 it out, which ironically was where Mark met his wife, 1:14:21.520 --> 1:14:24.479 his first wife Lords And it was funny because when 1:14:24.479 --> 1:14:26.120 we got there, I just told me later that she 1:14:26.280 --> 1:14:29.160 thought that I was Mark and Mark was me, and 1:14:29.200 --> 1:14:32.960 I was going, how how could that be? Anyway, we 1:14:33.080 --> 1:14:37.040 liked the studio, Jimmy was available. I managed to do 1:14:37.120 --> 1:14:39.920 a deal with a manager who I'm not going to mention, 1:14:40.240 --> 1:14:46.599 who was a complete chump. And it was Jimmy who 1:14:46.760 --> 1:14:51.759 recommended Roy Bitten from the Eas Street Band, who couldn't 1:14:51.800 --> 1:14:55.519 have been better. It was absolutely ideal and he was 1:14:55.720 --> 1:15:00.599 fast and he got it straight away. He understand exactly. 1:15:00.800 --> 1:15:06.360 Roy understood exactly what was needed. He had he wasn't. 1:15:06.960 --> 1:15:09.160 He had a break that was sufficiently long to do 1:15:09.200 --> 1:15:13.599 the tracking and so on. So we started. We booked 1:15:13.640 --> 1:15:17.880 in there in That was January. We booked in there 1:15:17.880 --> 1:15:20.799 and I think it was something like April, May, June, 1:15:20.920 --> 1:15:23.719 something like that. And when I got back to England, 1:15:23.720 --> 1:15:26.559 the guys got together and started rehearsing up the songs 1:15:26.600 --> 1:15:30.799 that became the Making Movies record, which and I generally 1:15:30.840 --> 1:15:35.480 did not attend rehearsals because why you know, that's a rehearsal. 1:15:36.320 --> 1:15:39.160 And I remember very clearly John Elsey rand mid day 1:15:39.320 --> 1:15:42.000 one day and he said, right, we're ready for you, 1:15:43.080 --> 1:15:45.600 which was me being summoned. And I went down to 1:15:45.640 --> 1:15:50.200 this tiny rehearsal studio in by the Cutty Sark the 1:15:50.240 --> 1:15:55.280 ship on the Thames place called the wood Wharf, which 1:15:55.360 --> 1:16:00.599 probably wasn't twenty foot square, and they played Tunnel Love 1:16:00.640 --> 1:16:05.759 Love and Romeo and Juliet with another keyboard player, Alan Clark, 1:16:06.280 --> 1:16:09.040 who we'd found somebody in my office had found and 1:16:09.120 --> 1:16:12.080 he'd come in and they played it like there were 1:16:12.080 --> 1:16:15.760 ten thousand people in the room and we when he 1:16:15.800 --> 1:16:19.439 got to the end of Romeo and Juliet, I knew 1:16:19.760 --> 1:16:26.799 that we were back, artistically speaking, and I was totally 1:16:26.840 --> 1:16:31.639 blown away by it. I thought that I thought Romeo 1:16:31.680 --> 1:16:36.120 and Juliet was just fantastic lyric. There's a line in 1:16:36.160 --> 1:16:38.439 that song you and me babe, how about it? 1:16:38.920 --> 1:16:39.120 Right? 1:16:39.760 --> 1:16:43.080 A great, great line, how many times have we all 1:16:43.120 --> 1:16:46.680 said that and all been told now fuck off? So 1:16:47.800 --> 1:16:52.479 we made we went off to New York made that 1:16:52.560 --> 1:16:57.880 record with Roy. I did have a bit of a 1:16:57.960 --> 1:17:00.679 problem with Jimmy because I had to have the phones 1:17:00.720 --> 1:17:04.800 cut off into the studio because Jimmy would produce in 1:17:04.960 --> 1:17:08.720 between the phone calls. So he was trying. He had, 1:17:08.760 --> 1:17:10.920 he had, he had this, he had, he was spending 1:17:11.000 --> 1:17:19.120 these plates he'd got Stevie NICKX was one plate. Bob Seger. 1:17:19.200 --> 1:17:23.200 I think he was sort of checking in discussions with 1:17:24.640 --> 1:17:29.240 of course Bruce. I can't remember who else, but he was. 1:17:29.720 --> 1:17:33.160 He was. He was always worried Jimmy. I hope he 1:17:33.240 --> 1:17:35.800 isn't now because he's got so much money and a 1:17:35.920 --> 1:17:40.920 very beautiful wife. But then he was desperately insecure, desperately 1:17:41.920 --> 1:17:44.600 and every night he would we would walk up the 1:17:44.640 --> 1:17:47.280 street and he would ask me the same question, what's 1:17:47.360 --> 1:17:51.360 going to happen to me? And I used to use 1:17:51.439 --> 1:17:56.240 that line, Charles Dickens line from mister Micawber. I said, 1:17:56.280 --> 1:18:01.519 now something will turn up. Something did turn up. But 1:18:01.680 --> 1:18:06.680 he was He and Shelley Yakas, who did the engineering 1:18:06.720 --> 1:18:10.280 on that, were great, But the problem was that they 1:18:10.640 --> 1:18:16.120 approached it from the perspective of the American hit record producers. So, 1:18:16.160 --> 1:18:19.599 for instance, we had a drum kit in there made 1:18:19.680 --> 1:18:23.880 up of other people's drum kit. We had Max Weinberg's 1:18:23.880 --> 1:18:27.679 snare drum, and we had Steve Gadd's floor tom tom, 1:18:28.280 --> 1:18:32.160 and we had somebody else's whatever and so and so, 1:18:32.280 --> 1:18:34.720 and picked with us was getting that. Our drummer was 1:18:35.160 --> 1:18:40.840 really ticked off with this. And we spent eight days 1:18:40.880 --> 1:18:44.880 doing the drum sound. And on the ninth day we 1:18:44.880 --> 1:18:47.760 took a lunch break and Pitch stayed behind and he 1:18:48.000 --> 1:18:52.400 retuned and reset every piece of that drum kit, and 1:18:52.439 --> 1:18:57.479 we came back and Iven literally produced an austri egg. 1:18:58.520 --> 1:19:04.040 He went absolutely nuts. The funny thing about those two 1:19:04.080 --> 1:19:08.439 guys was that every day they would they had two 1:19:10.760 --> 1:19:13.479 dog dog bowls that you would feed a dog, your 1:19:13.479 --> 1:19:18.280 pet dog with, and Shelley would empty an entire bottle 1:19:18.640 --> 1:19:23.400 of bee pollen tablets into each one, and then he'd 1:19:23.439 --> 1:19:26.800 mix it up with some alfalfa sprouts and they'd eat 1:19:26.840 --> 1:19:30.320 the whole lot. Now, bee pollen is a very very 1:19:30.320 --> 1:19:33.599 effective but very powerful vitimin, and you're supposed to take 1:19:33.720 --> 1:19:37.960 one or two a day, and they were taking bottles 1:19:38.960 --> 1:19:41.720 so and it had the effect, the speed effect, but 1:19:41.800 --> 1:19:44.360 it wasn't speed, it was out. It was bee pollen. 1:19:45.200 --> 1:19:49.760 And the two of them were like And in the 1:19:49.880 --> 1:19:54.280 end I just had to disconnect the phone because we could. 1:19:54.439 --> 1:19:57.120 We didn't have that much money then it hadn't flowed through. 1:19:57.160 --> 1:20:03.120 And you know, the pastage was expensive. Jimmy was fairly expensive. 1:20:04.640 --> 1:20:10.640 And they went the way they went about. Everything was 1:20:11.200 --> 1:20:14.479 full on. You know, it's like this, We've got to 1:20:14.520 --> 1:20:18.600 get this done. There's no fucking about, you know, you 1:20:18.640 --> 1:20:21.519 can't go and have a break now all this, and 1:20:25.200 --> 1:20:31.800 Jimmy got very frustrated with David Nofler. David was arguing constantly, 1:20:32.960 --> 1:20:36.479 this is not the way it's supposed to be and 1:20:36.560 --> 1:20:39.519 all this kind of stuff. Why are we staying at 1:20:39.560 --> 1:20:43.280 the Mayflower? We should be staying at Missus Miggins's guesthouse 1:20:43.360 --> 1:20:48.599 down the street. We're spending too much money. And this 1:20:48.800 --> 1:20:52.680 was really starting to get on everybody else's you know, 1:20:53.439 --> 1:20:57.080 as we say in England, everybody else's tits, and in 1:20:57.120 --> 1:21:03.080 particular it was really starting to bug Mark. I mean, 1:21:03.360 --> 1:21:09.400 it was already pretty the relationship was just not working. 1:21:10.080 --> 1:21:13.880 And there came the famous occasion or infamous occasion where 1:21:14.040 --> 1:21:17.120 Mark said to him, I wasn't there for this particular episode. 1:21:17.200 --> 1:21:20.720 Thank god. Mark said to him, right, he said, I 1:21:20.760 --> 1:21:23.679 want you to go back to the hotel. I want 1:21:23.720 --> 1:21:27.720 you to rehearse your part on Romeo and Juliet and 1:21:27.760 --> 1:21:31.760 come in tomorrow and we'll do it. And David just 1:21:31.840 --> 1:21:34.720 rolled his eyes, and then we all went off for 1:21:34.760 --> 1:21:37.599 the evening to do whatever we were doing, which might 1:21:37.600 --> 1:21:39.400 be just having a meal or going to a club, 1:21:39.479 --> 1:21:43.640 or I'll tell you a short aside. It might be 1:21:43.640 --> 1:21:48.640 interesting to you just going back to communicate because it 1:21:48.680 --> 1:21:54.920 just came into my mind. Jerry Wexler took Mark and 1:21:54.920 --> 1:21:59.240 I out one night clubbing, but I don't mean disco clubbing, 1:21:59.320 --> 1:22:03.120 I mean music clubbing. And we went and we saw 1:22:03.360 --> 1:22:09.559 James Blood, Olma and Cindy Lauper, and Cindy was singing 1:22:09.560 --> 1:22:15.519 with a group I think they were called Blue. 1:22:16.160 --> 1:22:18.880 Yeah. That was when she had her deal with PolyGram. 1:22:18.760 --> 1:22:23.679 And she did a fantastic version of a Gene Pitney 1:22:23.760 --> 1:22:27.880 song called I Want to Be Strong. Absolutely blew us 1:22:27.920 --> 1:22:33.280 out of our chairs. And we went back to Wexler's 1:22:33.280 --> 1:22:36.439 apartment and he said, which one of those do you 1:22:36.640 --> 1:22:39.240 think I should sign and Mark and I both went, 1:22:39.640 --> 1:22:43.320 you gotta sign that girl. That girl is ridiculous singer. 1:22:43.720 --> 1:22:46.479 And he goes, no, No, I'm going to sign James 1:22:46.479 --> 1:22:52.200 blood Olma, which he did, so Cindy got to go 1:22:52.320 --> 1:22:54.920 with whoever it was anyway, Sorry, So coming back to 1:22:54.960 --> 1:22:55.879 what you were asking. 1:22:55.640 --> 1:22:57.320 The name of the band was Blue Angel. 1:22:57.600 --> 1:23:04.120 Thank you Blue Angel. Yes. So the next day arrives 1:23:04.280 --> 1:23:07.320 and Mark David shows up and Mark says to him, 1:23:07.439 --> 1:23:10.000 did you practice your part like I told you? And 1:23:10.080 --> 1:23:17.559 David goes no, and everybody in the room went So 1:23:17.600 --> 1:23:20.719 he goes into the studio and he starts tuning his guitar, 1:23:21.520 --> 1:23:26.519 or rather he doesn't tune his guitar. And this has 1:23:26.600 --> 1:23:28.840 gone on for about half an hour. I got all 1:23:29.120 --> 1:23:35.240 from John later on, and finally Mark hit the talk 1:23:35.320 --> 1:23:38.080 back and he said to him, David, shit, I'll get 1:23:38.080 --> 1:23:41.160 off the pot. And David turned round and used a 1:23:41.240 --> 1:23:45.439 word I can't say on your podcast, and Mark just 1:23:45.520 --> 1:23:48.160 stood up, took his coat off the hook on the 1:23:48.200 --> 1:23:51.320 back of the door, put his coat on, and turned 1:23:51.400 --> 1:23:53.559 round to this room of people who had their mouth 1:23:53.840 --> 1:23:57.719 literally open, and said, I'm not working with him anymore. 1:23:57.960 --> 1:24:03.280 I'm going back to the hotel and walked out, so 1:24:03.520 --> 1:24:09.720 everybody Ivan laid another egg. Everybody went back to the 1:24:09.720 --> 1:24:17.679 hotel and Mark sorry, David and John Illslie had a 1:24:17.720 --> 1:24:21.320 conversation and basically John said, look, you got a choice. 1:24:21.439 --> 1:24:24.800 You can either make up with Mark and stay or 1:24:24.920 --> 1:24:31.559 leave and because and David said, I'll leave. And that 1:24:31.640 --> 1:24:33.080 was when I got on the phone call. I was 1:24:33.120 --> 1:24:35.479 on the West coast at that point, David's leaving the 1:24:35.520 --> 1:24:40.760 group and actually I just went, oh, great, thank god 1:24:40.800 --> 1:24:44.160 for that, because I knew that if he had stayed, 1:24:44.960 --> 1:24:47.960 it would have fallen to bits. I'm not saying it 1:24:48.000 --> 1:24:51.040 wouldn't have reconstructed, but at that moment it was very 1:24:51.040 --> 1:24:55.599 close to just collapsing because Pink our Drama was ready 1:24:55.600 --> 1:24:57.000 to go because of David. 1:24:57.720 --> 1:25:11.600 Absolutely, Okay, that album comes out with not gigantic expectations 1:25:11.640 --> 1:25:14.280 in the US. Once again, the Europe is a different market. 1:25:15.160 --> 1:25:21.320 It's got a more vibrant, impactful, direct sound. If you 1:25:21.400 --> 1:25:25.320 bought the record when it came out, you were quite stunned, 1:25:25.960 --> 1:25:29.040 especially with Romeo and Juliet, and from my perspective, it 1:25:29.280 --> 1:25:32.920 percolated slowly to become bigger and bigger and bigger. What 1:25:33.160 --> 1:25:35.160 was your perspective on the inside. 1:25:35.439 --> 1:25:39.200 You pretty much described it. I mean, we didn't have 1:25:40.760 --> 1:25:44.600 the Communicate setback in the rest of the world territories. 1:25:45.400 --> 1:25:47.680 And when do you talk about Europe, I don't want to. 1:25:47.760 --> 1:25:49.640 I'm not trying to correct you, but I only I 1:25:49.680 --> 1:25:51.920 think of the rest of the world, because it wasn't 1:25:51.960 --> 1:25:55.879 just Europe. It was Australasia, it was Japan, it was Canada, 1:25:56.160 --> 1:26:01.320 all of these territories, parts of South America were always 1:26:01.479 --> 1:26:05.840 going great guns for us. So the Communicate record and 1:26:05.960 --> 1:26:08.439 because of the touring off the back of it and 1:26:08.560 --> 1:26:12.360 keeping them in front of their fan base which was growing. 1:26:15.000 --> 1:26:21.559 When the third one came out, the decision was made 1:26:21.640 --> 1:26:25.960 the record companies. I never tried to impose singles on 1:26:26.120 --> 1:26:29.240 record companies because they have to do the work. I 1:26:29.320 --> 1:26:31.519 only did that once, and we're going to come to that. 1:26:33.560 --> 1:26:40.000 But I thought Romeo and Juliet as a song was 1:26:40.200 --> 1:26:45.280 utterly brilliant, and I did kind of push for that 1:26:45.400 --> 1:26:48.479 to be the single. And it was one of those things. 1:26:48.479 --> 1:26:50.640 And I'm going to tell you something which even the 1:26:50.720 --> 1:26:54.759 band members don't know. Of course, the record company wanted 1:26:54.760 --> 1:27:00.720 an edit, and I said to the guy from Phonogram 1:27:00.760 --> 1:27:05.639 in London. I said, we didn't have this conversation. If 1:27:05.640 --> 1:27:08.280 I ever hear about it, I will deny you and 1:27:08.360 --> 1:27:12.360 I spoke about it. Do you have you got the message? 1:27:12.600 --> 1:27:15.920 And he said I think so. So we put out 1:27:15.960 --> 1:27:18.280 an edited version because I knew radio was going to 1:27:18.400 --> 1:27:25.479 edit it anyway, and it became it went well in 1:27:25.520 --> 1:27:31.519 the UK. It got up to about number three, and 1:27:31.520 --> 1:27:33.920 and again we were off touring again. I mean, it 1:27:33.960 --> 1:27:40.840 was just the touring was relentless. And about a year later, 1:27:40.960 --> 1:27:43.880 John Nilsey said to me, took me aside somewhere, He said, 1:27:44.080 --> 1:27:48.559 did you tell Phonogram that they could edit Romeo and Juliet? 1:27:48.920 --> 1:27:56.400 And I went, He said, well, obviously you did. I said, 1:27:56.439 --> 1:27:59.439 have you mentioned that to Mark? He said no, and 1:27:59.479 --> 1:28:03.000 I'm not going he did exactly the right thing. So 1:28:03.400 --> 1:28:07.200 and the unlikely event Mark's watching this, that's why anyway, 1:28:07.360 --> 1:28:12.880 it didn't matter. So that became a hit. A Tunnel 1:28:12.960 --> 1:28:16.000 of Love became a hit as parts one and two. 1:28:17.439 --> 1:28:21.559 It's like Big Noise from Winnetka Part one kind of thing. 1:28:22.640 --> 1:28:24.479 There was a song on that album I thought was 1:28:24.479 --> 1:28:26.600 a hit song. It was not released, and that was 1:28:26.640 --> 1:28:30.000 a song called Hand in Hand. Had a good chorus. 1:28:30.360 --> 1:28:33.280 But anyway, that record got us back for sure. 1:28:33.960 --> 1:28:39.200 Before we go forward, let's go back. How did Knappler 1:28:39.400 --> 1:28:42.120 end Mark Knopfler end up working with Bob Dylan? And 1:28:42.160 --> 1:28:43.639 what was your experience there? 1:28:47.240 --> 1:28:55.320 Sorry, okay, this is welcome to Comedy Hour Central, Jerry Wexler. 1:28:56.920 --> 1:29:01.280 We are playing in at the Rocks See in La 1:29:01.840 --> 1:29:05.880 on the first American tour, which is packed wall to 1:29:05.920 --> 1:29:11.640 wall with faces I believe you call them. I remember 1:29:11.840 --> 1:29:15.280 Stevin Nix getting up and doing her Rihanna dance and 1:29:15.360 --> 1:29:20.760 being pelted with plastic cups and sit down, yes, silly cow, 1:29:20.920 --> 1:29:24.360 and all of this, and I remember all of the 1:29:24.400 --> 1:29:28.679 members of the band, Robbie and all of them been there, 1:29:28.840 --> 1:29:32.840 and all of these other characters. And we were doing 1:29:32.840 --> 1:29:40.400 two shows a night there. This was in end of 1:29:40.400 --> 1:29:45.120 March seventeen, end of March eighty. I think I got 1:29:45.200 --> 1:29:46.760 my caronology might be wrong. 1:29:46.840 --> 1:29:48.160 I think a little before that. 1:29:48.160 --> 1:29:53.360 I was seventy nine. Sorry, you're right. And we went 1:29:53.439 --> 1:29:56.320 up to on the Rocks upstairs for a drink in 1:29:56.360 --> 1:30:00.840 between the shows, and there was Bob or as we 1:30:00.960 --> 1:30:06.320 call him, rambling, and with wait. 1:30:05.720 --> 1:30:08.919 Wait, wait, wait, why do you call him rambling? 1:30:09.720 --> 1:30:12.640 In the sixties, anybody of my generation who listened to 1:30:12.680 --> 1:30:16.160 British radio would have listened to a satirical radio show 1:30:16.200 --> 1:30:20.400 on a Sunday called Round the Horn, which featured a 1:30:20.640 --> 1:30:26.400 spoof folks singer called Rambling sid Rumpole. You can find 1:30:26.400 --> 1:30:31.080 this stuff on YouTube or whatever, and Rambling sid Rumpole 1:30:31.200 --> 1:30:34.280 was played by a wonderful actor called Kenneth Williams, Who's 1:30:34.760 --> 1:30:39.040 Who's who would vocalize everything like a person from the 1:30:39.080 --> 1:30:40.240 West Country of England. 1:30:40.960 --> 1:30:41.599 So what are right? 1:30:41.760 --> 1:30:43.479 Or like that? You know, what are you mean? I'm 1:30:43.479 --> 1:30:46.519 going to sing you a song now. It's called the Toymes. 1:30:46.840 --> 1:30:51.080 They are a changing. He would do a spoof. So 1:30:51.600 --> 1:30:56.040 Mark and I just started calling Bob Rambling. Bob had 1:30:56.040 --> 1:30:58.040 no idea. He thought we were talking about rambling Jack 1:30:58.080 --> 1:31:02.560 Elliottly I bought him a box set of the cassettes 1:31:03.040 --> 1:31:08.479 of this show, but it just went straight over. So anyway, 1:31:08.520 --> 1:31:12.120 we go upstairs and Wexler's there with Bob, and of 1:31:12.160 --> 1:31:17.559 course Bob is Mark's biggest influence. Stroke call him an 1:31:17.600 --> 1:31:22.320 idol exactly, but you know, Bob to Mark was what 1:31:22.400 --> 1:31:25.320 Elvis was to be kind of thing or Buddy Rich 1:31:25.400 --> 1:31:30.360 to me. And they met and went for a huddle, 1:31:31.320 --> 1:31:36.240 and the next thing I know is that Dylan is 1:31:36.320 --> 1:31:41.800 doing an album in Muscle Shoals. Jerry's going to produce it. 1:31:42.000 --> 1:31:46.679 This is taking place in April May of seventy nine, 1:31:47.560 --> 1:31:56.840 and we conveniently had a gap in touring, and it's 1:31:56.880 --> 1:31:59.760 agreed that Mark's going to play on this record. And 1:31:59.800 --> 1:32:05.360 Mark recommends pick with us our drummer, quite rightly, absolutely 1:32:06.080 --> 1:32:10.160 ideal for that. I didn't go down there, I had 1:32:10.240 --> 1:32:12.960 I was also managing Jerry Rafferty at the time, who 1:32:13.040 --> 1:32:14.760 was pretty big, and I had quite a lot of 1:32:14.880 --> 1:32:17.639 stuff to do in La. So they went off down 1:32:17.680 --> 1:32:28.000 to two Muscle Shoals. Tim Drummond played bass, There were 1:32:28.040 --> 1:32:31.160 a couple of backing girls. I can't remember who else 1:32:31.280 --> 1:32:34.880 was on that record. It was oh and what happened 1:32:35.000 --> 1:32:38.320 was that's right. So I was in LA or New 1:32:38.400 --> 1:32:41.439 York wherever, and Mark called me he'd been there about 1:32:41.479 --> 1:32:45.439 three days. Nah, sorry, got this wrong. He went to 1:32:45.479 --> 1:32:48.800 Santa Monica to Bob's place to routine the songs, and 1:32:48.880 --> 1:32:50.880 I was in New York and he rang me and 1:32:50.920 --> 1:32:55.000 he said, he said, all these songs are about God. 1:32:56.120 --> 1:33:02.320 And I went what he said, They're about odd when 1:33:03.120 --> 1:33:06.680 but he's Jewish, isn't he? And Mark went, Mark's whispering 1:33:06.720 --> 1:33:08.880 to me like there's other and I said, why are 1:33:08.880 --> 1:33:13.760 you whispering? He went, oh, well, he said, he said yeah. 1:33:14.120 --> 1:33:18.160 And this was because Bob's Born Again record. So they 1:33:18.160 --> 1:33:22.320 went down there and I had arranged to go down 1:33:22.560 --> 1:33:28.559 to join them. And this was probably eight days, right Mark, 1:33:28.600 --> 1:33:30.360 I said, I'll be down tomorrow. He said, don't bother 1:33:30.439 --> 1:33:33.639 coming And I said, but why, He said, we're done, 1:33:33.640 --> 1:33:36.400 We're finished. I said, you've on him been there eight 1:33:36.479 --> 1:33:40.200 days and he said, Bob only plays a song twice. 1:33:42.280 --> 1:33:52.120 So they did that record in eight days. And I 1:33:52.200 --> 1:33:55.840 don't think. I don't think anybody got paid for it. 1:33:55.880 --> 1:34:03.960 Seemed utterly redundant to be seeking payment. And it came 1:34:04.000 --> 1:34:08.000 out and it did as Bob Dylan records do it 1:34:08.040 --> 1:34:10.240 for the time that it did pretty well, I think 1:34:10.479 --> 1:34:14.320 from what I recall. I mean, I've met Dylan several times, 1:34:14.360 --> 1:34:16.040 but if I you know, if I walked up to 1:34:16.120 --> 1:34:18.280 him now, he wouldn't have a clue who I am. 1:34:18.320 --> 1:34:24.760 And that's fine, no problem. And that was that was that, 1:34:24.880 --> 1:34:28.280 and then and then we were all. Mark had to 1:34:28.320 --> 1:34:30.519 come back to Europe because we were starting a German 1:34:30.600 --> 1:34:33.960 tour around about mid May, so they fitted it into 1:34:34.000 --> 1:34:38.320 that gap that they Of course, there was a different 1:34:38.360 --> 1:34:41.360 situation with the Infidels record, which came along later on. 1:34:43.640 --> 1:34:46.120 And Mark and Bob are good friends as far as 1:34:46.120 --> 1:34:50.480 I know, Yeah, well, I know they are, Yeah, they are, Okay. 1:34:51.200 --> 1:34:55.720 How does Mark end up as the sole producer of 1:34:55.840 --> 1:34:59.320 Love of Gold? And is there a pushback from the 1:34:59.479 --> 1:35:03.559 label over the length of the song? Certainly opening track 1:35:03.680 --> 1:35:09.759 Telegraph wrote. 1:35:07.800 --> 1:35:10.599 It became the sole producer because he said, I'm going 1:35:10.640 --> 1:35:20.880 to be the sole producer. That record was originally going 1:35:20.960 --> 1:35:25.000 to be a double album. There were a ton more 1:35:25.080 --> 1:35:30.600 songs that were recorded, and I can remember in the 1:35:30.640 --> 1:35:35.440 world sometimes you when you're a manager, you have to 1:35:35.520 --> 1:35:40.400 save the act from themselves. I'd say that's quite a 1:35:40.439 --> 1:35:45.600 prominent part of the job. I don't mean artistically, but 1:35:45.760 --> 1:35:49.960 in this case, there was a whole conversation that went on. 1:35:50.880 --> 1:35:52.920 I remember I was in the back of a car 1:35:53.600 --> 1:35:55.760 about the cost this is a ship that we had 1:35:55.800 --> 1:35:59.360 to deal with back then, the cost of cardboard for 1:35:59.439 --> 1:36:05.080 a double hours album, the cost of inner bags, lyric sheets, 1:36:05.920 --> 1:36:12.400 the pricing, retail pricing. I've always been very conscious of that. 1:36:12.439 --> 1:36:19.200 I always lean towards don't bleed people money wise. I mean, 1:36:19.280 --> 1:36:22.439 it's a separate subject. But the whole ticketing thing at 1:36:22.439 --> 1:36:25.840 the moment is I think it's completely bonkers. It's sort 1:36:25.840 --> 1:36:29.679 of it's sort of almost surreal, but the public seemed 1:36:29.680 --> 1:36:30.680 to put up with it. 1:36:31.360 --> 1:36:35.240 Okay, just go sideways for a second. Your take on ticketing, 1:36:39.160 --> 1:36:39.919 Arthur Fogel. 1:36:40.160 --> 1:36:44.320 I also do interviews like you, well, not like you. 1:36:45.840 --> 1:36:50.280 Arthur Fogel, who basically runs the international touring of big 1:36:50.320 --> 1:36:51.280 acts for Live Nation. 1:36:51.720 --> 1:36:54.439 Correct. Yeah, he said to eat something up beautifully. I 1:36:54.479 --> 1:36:56.760 interviewed him a few years ago. He said everything at 1:36:56.800 --> 1:37:03.120 the top is underpriced and everything else is overpriced, which 1:37:03.160 --> 1:37:06.600 I thought was quite a good thing. I think that 1:37:06.720 --> 1:37:12.719 ticketing is this is a this is a very long conversation, Bob. 1:37:13.720 --> 1:37:16.360 Okay, let's let's move on, because I want to get through. 1:37:17.960 --> 1:37:19.919 You were asked me about Love of a Golden Production. 1:37:21.920 --> 1:37:27.439 They by this time, we were we had basically become 1:37:27.479 --> 1:37:31.519 the biggest act as on the PolyGram label, certainly at 1:37:31.560 --> 1:37:34.600 that moment in time, or well on the way to 1:37:34.640 --> 1:37:37.120 becoming the only act I can think of who might 1:37:37.160 --> 1:37:39.479 have been a bigger record seller back then would have 1:37:39.560 --> 1:37:44.080 been Elton John who was a label mate of ours, 1:37:46.000 --> 1:37:52.080 and I just made the decision that he was going 1:37:52.120 --> 1:37:55.679 to produce it. He I can't remember how we met 1:37:55.760 --> 1:38:00.720 Neil Dorfsman. I think we met Neil Dorsman during the 1:38:00.720 --> 1:38:05.800 making of the Local Hero movie soundtrack, which just preceded 1:38:06.400 --> 1:38:12.160 the Love of a Gold record, and no sorry, Love 1:38:12.200 --> 1:38:15.519 of a Gold Sorry. Local Hero came after, just right after, 1:38:18.400 --> 1:38:27.479 and by this time David had left the group. I 1:38:27.520 --> 1:38:30.120 didn't know it at the time, but Pick had decided 1:38:30.160 --> 1:38:32.680 to do that record and leave the group, which he 1:38:32.720 --> 1:38:37.400 did immediately after he'd finished his parts. Quite a crafty 1:38:37.439 --> 1:38:48.120 little economic decision on his part, and they made a record, 1:38:48.200 --> 1:38:51.160 as I say, which had quite a number of more 1:38:51.200 --> 1:38:54.000 songs than the ones that finally ended up on it. 1:38:57.200 --> 1:39:00.960 And I had heard bits and pieces. The Telegraph Road 1:39:01.840 --> 1:39:06.439 first appeared on the first Australian tour we did. I 1:39:06.439 --> 1:39:09.760 remember being in the venue in Perth with just the 1:39:09.920 --> 1:39:15.680 crew guys, actually probably just the sound guy, and they 1:39:15.720 --> 1:39:18.240 played it the whole thing. I was just sitting in 1:39:18.280 --> 1:39:21.600 the stalls and I just ran onto the stage and 1:39:21.600 --> 1:39:24.160 I went, what on earth is that? And that was 1:39:26.439 --> 1:39:29.439 Telegraph Road incidentally, is in Detroit. It's the name of 1:39:29.479 --> 1:39:32.519 the Ring road that goes around Detroit. And I had 1:39:32.520 --> 1:39:34.800 been sitting next to Mark on the bus as we 1:39:34.800 --> 1:39:37.280 were making our way to a venue in the pouring rain, 1:39:37.880 --> 1:39:40.320 and we were stuck in a traffic jam, and he 1:39:40.360 --> 1:39:43.120 had a piece of paper and he wrote down on 1:39:43.160 --> 1:39:46.799 the piece of paper six lanes of traffic, three lanes 1:39:46.840 --> 1:39:50.600 moving slow, and folded it up and put it in 1:39:50.640 --> 1:39:54.519 his pocket. And I heard it coming back at me 1:39:55.040 --> 1:40:02.439 months later. So we did that record, and you would 1:40:02.520 --> 1:40:07.120 ask me about the length of things. By this time, 1:40:09.240 --> 1:40:13.759 the way that people dealt with me had markedly changed. 1:40:15.680 --> 1:40:19.439 I don't mean that I was I didn't. I wasn't 1:40:19.479 --> 1:40:22.080 one of these shouters and screamers and all of that. 1:40:22.240 --> 1:40:26.080 But the you know, this was a big thing for 1:40:26.160 --> 1:40:33.280 the phonogram companies, particularly Phonogram had a not Phonogram, PolyGram 1:40:33.520 --> 1:40:39.640 UK Phonegram is one of the labels, had a wonderful president, 1:40:39.760 --> 1:40:44.880 guy called Ramon Lopez, Spanish guy. And I took that 1:40:44.960 --> 1:40:48.480 record into play to Ramon, just me and him, and 1:40:48.479 --> 1:40:51.360 he put it on and he played the whole album through, 1:40:52.439 --> 1:40:55.320 and I'll never forget what he said to me. He said, 1:40:55.479 --> 1:40:57.519 I want to do a Spanish accent. He said, ed, 1:40:58.720 --> 1:41:02.320 this is not pop me sick, this is classical music. 1:41:03.560 --> 1:41:08.800 And I went and he said, we are going to 1:41:08.960 --> 1:41:12.719 make this the most successful record we have ever had. 1:41:13.200 --> 1:41:17.760 And I'm like because he fucking loved it and he 1:41:17.840 --> 1:41:25.839 could see that it represented a kind of very different, 1:41:26.280 --> 1:41:29.000 you know, not many bad. It had been a long 1:41:29.080 --> 1:41:33.679 time since Aguarda di Vida, so having this mega track. 1:41:35.240 --> 1:41:40.439 I then went up to Scotland where Mark was. We well, 1:41:40.439 --> 1:41:44.000 actually we both went up for the We went to 1:41:44.080 --> 1:41:53.200 the set of Local Hero, which David Putnam was producing 1:41:53.600 --> 1:41:58.639 and on the first so we got up there, staying 1:41:58.680 --> 1:42:01.200 in this poky little hotel with the cast and crew, 1:42:01.720 --> 1:42:04.479 and at breakfast the following morning, Mark said to me, 1:42:04.960 --> 1:42:07.679 I'm going to ask you to do something you don't 1:42:07.720 --> 1:42:11.719 want to do. And I said, we are not having 1:42:11.760 --> 1:42:17.800 sex anyway, no, no, no, no no. I said, you 1:42:17.880 --> 1:42:20.400 want me to get the record companies to put Private 1:42:20.439 --> 1:42:24.760 Investigations out as the first single without an edit. And 1:42:24.840 --> 1:42:27.040 he said, how do you know, I said, because it 1:42:27.160 --> 1:42:31.719 is fucking brilliant. It's totally brilliant. If you're a manager, 1:42:31.960 --> 1:42:34.839 you work with what your artist gives you. And if Heaven, 1:42:35.920 --> 1:42:44.240 Thank Heaven. You love it as a fan, almost not commercially, 1:42:44.479 --> 1:42:47.280 you just love it as a piece of music. And 1:42:47.360 --> 1:42:52.400 I thought it was utterly, absolutely brilliant. And he said yes, 1:42:52.479 --> 1:42:55.280 he said, can you do that? I said yes, I said, 1:42:55.280 --> 1:42:59.080 but there's going to be some pushback on it. When 1:42:59.120 --> 1:43:01.439 I finally got back down to London and I took 1:43:01.520 --> 1:43:08.479 the record into play to the London Phonogram company and 1:43:08.560 --> 1:43:10.120 it was then that I played it to ram On. 1:43:10.280 --> 1:43:14.439 I just got the chronology wrong. The head of radio promotion, 1:43:14.560 --> 1:43:20.000 who I won't name, said to me. I said to them, 1:43:20.000 --> 1:43:21.800 I said, I'm going to ask you to do so 1:43:22.280 --> 1:43:24.920 you're not going to want to do. Said, I want 1:43:24.960 --> 1:43:29.920 you to put that second track Private Investigations out. It's 1:43:29.960 --> 1:43:33.360 the first single without an edit, and it's seven minutes long. 1:43:34.840 --> 1:43:38.000 And the head of radio promotions said to me, we 1:43:38.040 --> 1:43:43.040 can't do that. People will ring up their radio stations 1:43:43.200 --> 1:43:48.439 and think that something's gone wrong. And I went, what why. 1:43:48.880 --> 1:43:53.519 He said, because it stops. I said, yes, those are 1:43:53.520 --> 1:44:00.320 called rest periods. Because I was an it's a bit 1:44:00.400 --> 1:44:05.240 sip teeny bit ticked the managing director. Then one of 1:44:06.400 --> 1:44:12.759 this endless literally of managing directors I was. He said, okay, 1:44:13.080 --> 1:44:16.200 we'll do that. I said, I know, it's a risk. 1:44:16.920 --> 1:44:20.240 I said, this that will be as big as MacArthur Park, 1:44:20.800 --> 1:44:26.280 or it will die death. So they put it out. 1:44:27.120 --> 1:44:27.360 Now. 1:44:27.439 --> 1:44:32.840 I I had, you know, two or three ladies working 1:44:32.880 --> 1:44:36.040 for me at the time, well for nearly the whole time, 1:44:36.600 --> 1:44:39.080 and they would have the radio on downstairs, and I 1:44:39.160 --> 1:44:41.840 was upstairs in my office and I kept hearing this song, 1:44:42.479 --> 1:44:48.800 and I buzzed Gene, my American PA, whose voice would 1:44:49.000 --> 1:44:53.280 strip chrome off a bumper, and I said to her, 1:44:53.880 --> 1:45:00.000 will you please stop playing that bloody record. Wow, it's 1:45:00.320 --> 1:45:06.719 it's not us, it's Radio one. I said what I said, 1:45:06.920 --> 1:45:09.479 But they're playing the whole thing, and she said yes. 1:45:11.080 --> 1:45:16.600 So this thing was picked up by the rest of 1:45:16.640 --> 1:45:21.479 the world radio, no edit, whole thing. We did a 1:45:21.520 --> 1:45:25.040 pretty crappy video to go with it, but didn't really matter. 1:45:25.280 --> 1:45:29.639 And the next week, to give you an idea of 1:45:29.640 --> 1:45:35.040 my own belief and the amount of bullshit I can talk, 1:45:35.760 --> 1:45:37.640 I call up the charts used to come through on 1:45:37.680 --> 1:45:40.360 a Tuesday back then, So I call up Phonogram on 1:45:40.400 --> 1:45:42.960 a Tuesday, and I get the cleaner of somebody on 1:45:43.000 --> 1:45:46.160 the phone and I tell him who I am, and 1:45:46.200 --> 1:45:52.600 I say, have you got this week's radio chart, the 1:45:52.720 --> 1:45:55.479 Music week Charts, which would be equivalent to the Billboard, 1:45:56.360 --> 1:45:58.439 And there's a scrabbling of papers and he said yes, 1:45:58.560 --> 1:46:01.920 And I said, can you look between numbers fifty and 1:46:02.040 --> 1:46:06.920 seventy five and see if a song called Private Investigations 1:46:06.960 --> 1:46:11.320 has gone in? And he looks and he said, nah, no, 1:46:11.479 --> 1:46:13.840 it's not there, and I'm thinking, fuck, we haven't even 1:46:13.840 --> 1:46:16.600 made the top seventy five. And then he said to me, 1:46:16.640 --> 1:46:20.000 he said, what's it called again, I said, private Investigations. 1:46:20.280 --> 1:46:23.360 He said, oh, there's a song called Private Investigations that's 1:46:23.400 --> 1:46:29.520 gone in at number two. And I went wow, wow, 1:46:30.240 --> 1:46:37.519 because I just didn't know. And that record became an 1:46:37.560 --> 1:46:42.080 absolute classic. In the Dos Traits Repertoire Live Repertoire, Big 1:46:42.200 --> 1:46:47.360 Big fan favorite Carl Scott blessed him, who was at 1:46:47.360 --> 1:46:52.360 this point in a totally unenviable position, brings me up 1:46:52.360 --> 1:46:54.800 and he says, the A and R Department have done 1:46:54.800 --> 1:46:58.680 an edit on Telegraph Road and I have they? And 1:46:58.720 --> 1:47:02.600 he said it's two and a half minutes long, and 1:47:02.680 --> 1:47:06.240 I just burst out laughing. I said, Carl, don't be silly. 1:47:07.160 --> 1:47:10.320 We can't put that out, so we weren't able to 1:47:10.360 --> 1:47:17.280 put out a radio friendly length single In America. The 1:47:17.320 --> 1:47:19.800 album did quite well, I mean I can't remember what 1:47:19.880 --> 1:47:22.080 it's sold over two million in the end. 1:47:27.479 --> 1:47:32.519 When do you find Pick is going to leave the band? 1:47:32.600 --> 1:47:35.919 What's going on there? And frequently in the history of groups, 1:47:36.720 --> 1:47:39.760 you'll lose one member, you change the chemistry. I mean, 1:47:40.000 --> 1:47:44.040 Rim the drummer quit after an illness, and it was 1:47:44.080 --> 1:47:47.759 never really you seem being very successful. 1:47:47.240 --> 1:47:48.040 And you're the same. 1:47:48.360 --> 1:47:50.639 Yeah, what do you think when Pick says I'm done? 1:47:51.200 --> 1:47:53.559 It's the same thing in this situation. I mean, I 1:47:53.600 --> 1:47:57.439 played drums. I'm not a professional drummer level, but I 1:47:57.439 --> 1:47:59.680 played drums well enough that I could play with the 1:47:59.760 --> 1:48:07.880 not Hillbillies, etc. And Pick was a really, really good player, 1:48:08.000 --> 1:48:12.080 and he was absolutely right for the music they were 1:48:12.200 --> 1:48:17.640 making at the beginning of their career, and more particularly, 1:48:17.720 --> 1:48:21.200 he was right for the level of venues we were doing. 1:48:21.479 --> 1:48:27.639 We had not got up to mega venues. He had 1:48:28.360 --> 1:48:33.559 unbelievably where these things go. He'd married my first secretary, Linda. 1:48:35.640 --> 1:48:40.400 They divorced and then they remarried. Go figure, So he'd 1:48:40.400 --> 1:48:44.840 married Linda. Linda was still working for me this was 1:48:44.920 --> 1:48:48.479 not a very good arrangement because they'd go you know, 1:48:48.560 --> 1:48:50.840 she'd go home and she'd tell him everything that was 1:48:50.880 --> 1:48:58.479 going on in the office, and how do I do 1:48:58.560 --> 1:49:03.720 this diplomatically. There were some aspects to the way that 1:49:03.960 --> 1:49:06.000 the band was going which Pick was not happy with. 1:49:06.479 --> 1:49:08.360 The first of all, it was, first of all, it 1:49:08.439 --> 1:49:15.639 was getting considerably louder on live shows, and he did 1:49:15.680 --> 1:49:22.000 not like battling with the guitars basically because it was 1:49:22.320 --> 1:49:25.439 not deafening, but it was getting loud. And he's not 1:49:28.840 --> 1:49:33.120 you know, he couldn't do Phil Rudd's job in ac DC. 1:49:33.640 --> 1:49:40.320 He's not that kind of player. There were just personal 1:49:40.320 --> 1:49:44.360 issues arising really between him and Mark, because Mark by 1:49:44.439 --> 1:49:49.200 then had emerged as happens in many, many, many bands 1:49:49.240 --> 1:49:53.680 that start off as democracies, Mark had become a dictator. 1:49:54.680 --> 1:49:57.560 I mean he was right in everything. Now. He was producing, 1:49:58.840 --> 1:50:01.479 he was singing everything, he was arranging everything, and he 1:50:01.600 --> 1:50:06.200 wasn't exactly telling people how to what to play. But 1:50:06.280 --> 1:50:14.120 Mark's very precise about how he hears his songs kind 1:50:14.160 --> 1:50:17.280 of in his head. He's not the kind of musician 1:50:17.320 --> 1:50:21.440 who goes into the studio and like say the Stones 1:50:21.560 --> 1:50:25.439 might from time to time and jam and hope that 1:50:25.520 --> 1:50:29.679 something arises. He goes in and he's got a very 1:50:29.760 --> 1:50:33.559 clear idea. That's not to say he doesn't like let 1:50:33.600 --> 1:50:36.960 other people put their ten cents in. He does, but 1:50:37.000 --> 1:50:41.760 at the end of the day he'll basically dictate if 1:50:41.800 --> 1:50:46.439 you like, how the thing's going to go. And Pick 1:50:46.600 --> 1:50:50.040 was not happy with that aspect. He and his Linda 1:50:50.160 --> 1:50:53.040 my secretary, his wife, my secretary, they just had their 1:50:53.080 --> 1:51:01.800 first baby. He was on one core water of albums 1:51:01.840 --> 1:51:08.280 one and two, had one third on albums three and 1:51:08.600 --> 1:51:16.040 four and plus whatever the tours have produced, because by 1:51:16.080 --> 1:51:23.719 this time the tours were profitable. So he did the 1:51:23.760 --> 1:51:30.960 record and there was a big row about something in 1:51:31.040 --> 1:51:33.320 New York. I can't remember what it was. It was 1:51:33.360 --> 1:51:38.840 something to do with kind of the domestic arrangements. I 1:51:38.840 --> 1:51:42.679 mean a lot of people listening to your You did 1:51:42.680 --> 1:51:46.840 a fantastic podcast some time ago with Bill Kirbishly. It 1:51:47.000 --> 1:51:50.880 was one of my absolute heroes. I love Bill, and 1:51:50.920 --> 1:51:53.000 what struck me about that because I've listened to it 1:51:53.040 --> 1:51:59.080 about three times. Bill was open enough about his personal 1:51:59.120 --> 1:52:02.799 life and the impact that that has had on his career. 1:52:04.840 --> 1:52:12.639 And also Bill said something which absolutely I totally totally. 1:52:12.680 --> 1:52:14.200 If he was here now, i'd give him a hug. 1:52:14.960 --> 1:52:18.400 He was talking about why he and Robert Plant split up, 1:52:19.120 --> 1:52:21.120 and he said that for him, it was a matter 1:52:21.200 --> 1:52:25.360 of principle, and in a strange kind of way. I 1:52:25.400 --> 1:52:27.160 think for Pick it was a bit of a matter 1:52:27.240 --> 1:52:33.000 of principle. And I was very sad to see him 1:52:33.000 --> 1:52:35.640 good because he came to me to tell me, and 1:52:35.720 --> 1:52:37.800 I was very sad to see him go, But I 1:52:37.840 --> 1:52:41.920 didn't try to talk him into staying. In my experience, 1:52:42.360 --> 1:52:45.800 if you try and talk creative people into doing things 1:52:45.840 --> 1:52:48.040 they don't want to do, it's not going to work. 1:52:48.080 --> 1:52:53.960 It'll backfire. And I remember that John Remark and myself 1:52:54.000 --> 1:52:57.160 had lunch with Pick, and I said, I said to 1:52:57.200 --> 1:52:58.560 Pick when he told me, I said, you're going to 1:52:58.640 --> 1:52:59.960 have to You're going to have to tell the other 1:53:00.400 --> 1:53:02.200 and he went, yeah, I know. So he told them 1:53:03.040 --> 1:53:09.040 and it was logistically inconvenient because I already had of course, 1:53:09.240 --> 1:53:12.400 I had a tour already set up, already to go. 1:53:13.479 --> 1:53:16.320 I think the thing was on sale and suddenly we 1:53:16.400 --> 1:53:19.320 needed another drummer. Now I need to go back to 1:53:19.360 --> 1:53:21.400 my days as an agent. I used to work with 1:53:21.439 --> 1:53:24.080 a guy called Barry Marshall, who's one of the absolute 1:53:24.120 --> 1:53:27.400 best promoters in this country that we've ever produced, and 1:53:27.479 --> 1:53:29.840 probably one of my along with his wife Jenny, one 1:53:29.880 --> 1:53:33.000 of my dearest friends. At the time Barry was managed. 1:53:33.040 --> 1:53:35.439 This is back in the seventies. Barry was managing a 1:53:35.560 --> 1:53:42.360 Welsh jam band a bit like the Dead or Dave 1:53:42.439 --> 1:53:46.720 Math more like the Dead really, and they had a 1:53:46.760 --> 1:53:50.760 drummer called Terry Williams, who, of course I became very 1:53:50.760 --> 1:53:54.479 good friends with. And Terry eventually left Man and joined 1:53:54.600 --> 1:53:58.439 Dave Edmunds Rock Pile and was on all of those 1:53:59.760 --> 1:54:03.000 Dave Edmund's records. And Terry is the king of the 1:54:03.040 --> 1:54:08.720 shuffle as we drummers call it, kind of boogie kind 1:54:08.720 --> 1:54:14.519 of playing. So when so so, when Pitt left, Mark 1:54:14.600 --> 1:54:18.000 said to me, and sometimes I wonder where where Mark's 1:54:18.040 --> 1:54:20.320 brain is, because he says to me, do you know 1:54:20.360 --> 1:54:21.080 any drummers? 1:54:23.479 --> 1:54:23.839 Yeah? 1:54:24.160 --> 1:54:32.360 Loads, he said, can you find us a drummer? Oh, yeah, 1:54:32.560 --> 1:54:34.280 I'll tell you, I said, I'll tell you who you want. 1:54:34.400 --> 1:54:39.800 You need. Terry Williams, who's Terry Williams told him Terry 1:54:39.800 --> 1:54:44.800 comes up, goes to what I suppose you'd call an audition, 1:54:44.960 --> 1:54:48.840 which wasn't really about an hour after he's got there, 1:54:49.040 --> 1:54:55.000 Illy rings me up. He says, great, fantastic, and I 1:54:55.040 --> 1:54:59.200 said what you want him? He went absolutely. He said 1:54:59.560 --> 1:55:02.360 he hasn't walked around his drum kit once, which is 1:55:02.360 --> 1:55:04.480 what Pick would do. Pick would walk around his drum 1:55:04.560 --> 1:55:09.240 kit going like that. Terry became the drummer. And what 1:55:09.400 --> 1:55:12.080 was significant about that was not only could he play 1:55:12.160 --> 1:55:16.920 the catalog if you like the stuff, but we were 1:55:16.960 --> 1:55:19.760 moving into bigger arenas and we were on our way 1:55:19.800 --> 1:55:25.160 to stadiums for better or worse and day and Terry 1:55:25.280 --> 1:55:29.360 was what we needed. He was an absolute powerhouse and 1:55:29.880 --> 1:55:34.320 he has a quality which a lot of your audience 1:55:34.480 --> 1:55:38.560 might not understand. But the drummers in your audience will 1:55:39.280 --> 1:55:50.200 he swings, count Bezi swung, Ellington swung, Oscar Peterson swung 1:55:51.440 --> 1:55:56.040 and the people who drove those swinging units were the drummers. 1:55:57.080 --> 1:56:02.600 Uh and Terry Williams was By this time we already 1:56:02.640 --> 1:56:08.200 had two keyboard players, Alan Clark and Guy Fletcher, and 1:56:08.240 --> 1:56:10.400 then we had Mark and we and we ended up 1:56:11.520 --> 1:56:14.840 we needed a saxon. No, the saxon came a little 1:56:14.840 --> 1:56:23.360 bit later. So we did that tour and we recorded 1:56:23.360 --> 1:56:27.120 a live album the Alchemy record, which amazingly sold over 1:56:27.160 --> 1:56:31.280 five million copies, which is pretty good for a live record. Uh. 1:56:31.440 --> 1:56:35.480 And Terry became a full time member of the band. 1:56:35.640 --> 1:56:37.800 And the other great thing about Terry, and it's true, 1:56:37.840 --> 1:56:41.080 I think of you really need this with musicians. He 1:56:41.200 --> 1:56:46.200 was easy, He didn't he didn't have a drug problem, 1:56:46.800 --> 1:56:51.240 he didn't have a woman problem. He didn't get silly, 1:56:51.400 --> 1:56:54.840 he didn't collapse, he was ready. He never missed a gig. 1:56:55.680 --> 1:56:59.680 He put one hundred percent into every performance. He was 1:57:00.120 --> 1:57:03.400 used to get along with. He never complained. I never 1:57:03.440 --> 1:57:08.200 heard him whining or minging about anything. Fantastic. 1:57:08.800 --> 1:57:12.560 I wish, okay, you bring a new member in the band. 1:57:12.960 --> 1:57:15.280 The others have been working together a better part of 1:57:15.280 --> 1:57:21.280 a decade. Most bands they pay him a flat fee 1:57:21.800 --> 1:57:24.800 and if anything, maybe they'll wait yours and make them 1:57:24.800 --> 1:57:28.360 a full member. Now you only have two original members 1:57:29.680 --> 1:57:33.000 forgetting the songwriting. You know, what do you decide? 1:57:33.360 --> 1:57:37.760 You know, well, yeah, good question. The other guys were 1:57:38.160 --> 1:57:43.280 on a fee. I do believe that if you should 1:57:43.280 --> 1:57:47.000 pay everybody the same, they're riding on the same bus, 1:57:47.120 --> 1:57:49.960 they're going on the same plane, they're playing the same show. 1:57:50.080 --> 1:57:53.480 For two and a quarter rounds whatever it is, and 1:57:53.520 --> 1:57:57.320 we used to pay what I used to do just 1:57:57.360 --> 1:57:59.680 as a tip for any managers who might be listening. 1:57:59.760 --> 1:58:04.360 I used to ring my friends who were managing the 1:58:04.400 --> 1:58:10.600 acts of a simp. Sorry, same kind of level. So 1:58:10.640 --> 1:58:13.480 I used to ring Roger Forrester who was managing Eric Clapton. 1:58:13.560 --> 1:58:16.680 I used to ring Steve or Roger was managing Pink Floyd. 1:58:17.000 --> 1:58:19.800 I used to call Tony Smith who was managing Genesis 1:58:19.880 --> 1:58:22.360 and probably somebody else, and I would find out what 1:58:22.440 --> 1:58:25.040 they were paying their side men, and then I would 1:58:25.040 --> 1:58:28.720 average it and I would increase it, and that was 1:58:28.840 --> 1:58:34.120 the basis on which they were paid, and then we 1:58:34.640 --> 1:58:39.040 were the straits because it's their money, not mine. Were 1:58:39.240 --> 1:58:45.240 very generous with bonuses to our crew. We weren't kind 1:58:45.240 --> 1:58:48.000 of quite at the tailor swift level with our crew, 1:58:48.680 --> 1:58:53.360 but the money we would have been. I got to 1:58:53.440 --> 1:58:55.920 give her eleven out of ten for what she did 1:58:55.960 --> 1:59:01.040 for her truck drivers, people who if the truck drivers 1:59:01.160 --> 1:59:05.040 don't care, there, you'll fucked. You know, these people make 1:59:05.480 --> 1:59:10.040 the thing happen. So we basically had people on what 1:59:10.080 --> 1:59:12.880 I'll call what you call a flat fee salary, whatever 1:59:12.880 --> 1:59:16.160 you want to call it. With a bonus at the end, 1:59:16.600 --> 1:59:22.640 and if they did. For instance, when Terry played on 1:59:22.720 --> 1:59:25.880 the twisting by the pool ep which was a bit 1:59:25.880 --> 1:59:29.520 of a throwaway, he got a royalty on that and 1:59:29.600 --> 1:59:33.000 still does. And the others did that kind of thing. 1:59:34.560 --> 1:59:38.280 I ran a very I like to think. I mean, 1:59:38.320 --> 1:59:40.560 there are people who probably would disagree with this and 1:59:40.600 --> 1:59:44.120 say he's a hard nosed bastard, but I like to 1:59:44.160 --> 1:59:49.480 think that we ran a pretty fair ship. And that's 1:59:49.480 --> 1:59:52.440 why the people that we had stayed with us for 1:59:52.520 --> 1:59:57.160 so long. I mean, Alan Clark gave up at one point. 1:59:58.640 --> 2:00:01.920 He gave a pretty solid gig with Clapton to come 2:00:01.960 --> 2:00:06.360 back to the streets, and I got him a big 2:00:06.400 --> 2:00:11.040 gig prior to that when we were off with Tina Turner. 2:00:12.360 --> 2:00:18.360 Good musicians are good musicians are generally, but not always, 2:00:18.440 --> 2:00:21.400 but generally they're pretty bright. They're pretty intelligent. I mean 2:00:21.400 --> 2:00:28.200 they're not you're not. You don't become whoever by being stupid. 2:00:29.880 --> 2:00:33.160 Which brings us to brother in arms. What do you 2:00:33.400 --> 2:00:36.960 think going in? How does Sting get on the money 2:00:36.960 --> 2:00:40.880 for nothing? Although he'd worked with Deil Dorsman previously, and 2:00:41.480 --> 2:00:43.440 do you know what's about to happen? 2:00:45.360 --> 2:00:48.040 Okay, let's go to back to the beginning of that tale. 2:00:48.240 --> 2:00:57.600 After after Love Over Gold and Alchemy, Mark did a 2:00:57.720 --> 2:01:03.360 couple of movies. He did al with Helen Mirren and 2:01:03.480 --> 2:01:12.160 he did The Princess Bride with whoever was in the 2:01:12.160 --> 2:01:15.280 Princess's Pride of My dam Mental blank. Andre the Giant 2:01:15.360 --> 2:01:20.320 was in it, I know. And and he started he 2:01:20.440 --> 2:01:23.960 was doing a bit of producing with other people. He 2:01:24.080 --> 2:01:29.400 did a record with Aztec Camera and so on and 2:01:29.400 --> 2:01:35.280 so forth. And he was down Phil Man's and Era 2:01:35.400 --> 2:01:39.760 from Roxy Music has a really nice studio outside of town. 2:01:40.160 --> 2:01:44.880 And I was down there one day doing some soundtrack work, 2:01:44.920 --> 2:01:48.600 I think, and I popped down and we drove back 2:01:48.680 --> 2:01:51.280 up to London and he just said to me, this 2:01:51.280 --> 2:01:56.120 would have been this must have been in late eighty four. 2:01:56.920 --> 2:01:59.640 He just said to me, I've got some songs together. 2:01:59.720 --> 2:02:03.920 Can you get the guys back together for me. I 2:02:03.960 --> 2:02:08.760 will say that between the records, I never ever asked 2:02:08.840 --> 2:02:15.040 him about the next Diastraates record, And I have to 2:02:15.080 --> 2:02:19.040 be absolutely fair, the record companies didn't either. Now maybe 2:02:19.080 --> 2:02:21.440 because they were terrified, I don't know, but they never did. 2:02:21.560 --> 2:02:24.760 Nobody ever said are we going to get another record? 2:02:24.840 --> 2:02:26.640 Or when are we going to get another record, which 2:02:26.680 --> 2:02:32.560 you might have expected them to, but they didn't, and 2:02:32.600 --> 2:02:34.840 so that's what happened. We got the we got the 2:02:37.360 --> 2:02:40.280 basic group back together. They went down to Phil's place 2:02:40.480 --> 2:02:43.880 and started working up the songs and I remember going 2:02:43.880 --> 2:02:48.240 down there one day and I had money for nothing 2:02:48.280 --> 2:02:52.760 for the first time. And one thing that struck me 2:02:52.800 --> 2:02:55.000 about it was that I had done the first tour 2:02:55.080 --> 2:02:58.960 of UK and Europe as an agent for zz Top, 2:03:00.720 --> 2:03:03.920 a band that I love guys, I mean, Dusty's passed 2:03:03.920 --> 2:03:08.160 away sadly, but the best guys, I mean the best guys, 2:03:08.560 --> 2:03:14.760 especially Billy, fantastic bloke, because they have a sense of humor. 2:03:16.320 --> 2:03:23.600 You'd have to if you're in Zeezy. I'd taken Mark 2:03:23.680 --> 2:03:29.040 to see them. And the guitar tone of that lick 2:03:29.400 --> 2:03:32.600 is not a I'm not saying. I'm not saying because 2:03:32.600 --> 2:03:35.280 I don't know, but it was not a million miles 2:03:35.320 --> 2:03:39.840 away from you know, because when the first time they 2:03:39.880 --> 2:03:43.240 came over, they weren't doing I'll tell you a little aside. 2:03:44.320 --> 2:03:46.320 They came over here to do an old gray Whistle 2:03:46.360 --> 2:03:51.680 test showing London at the Apollo, which is thirty three 2:03:51.760 --> 2:03:54.600 hundred seats, and another show in Germany and the Big 2:03:54.600 --> 2:04:00.160 Two in Germany, and they were on the album is 2:04:00.240 --> 2:04:02.680 Ombree I think it was called, and that. 2:04:03.040 --> 2:04:04.760 Was the first Warner Brothers reckord. 2:04:05.200 --> 2:04:07.240 Yeah, was it okay? And there was a track on 2:04:07.320 --> 2:04:09.600 it called I Thank You, which I think is an 2:04:09.640 --> 2:04:21.120 old day thank you. Yeah, and uh, I remember, I 2:04:21.160 --> 2:04:30.360 remember they they wanted to go. They were constantly going 2:04:30.360 --> 2:04:32.600 on about how they came from Houston and they could 2:04:32.600 --> 2:04:37.000 eat the hottest food known to man, and they wanted 2:04:37.000 --> 2:04:40.960 to go. They wanted to know what Indian restaurant in 2:04:41.000 --> 2:04:45.200 London served the hottest curry. So I took them to 2:04:46.600 --> 2:04:48.960 Funny Enough, a place that Freddie Mercury used to go. 2:04:49.040 --> 2:04:50.760 So I used to see fred In there all the time. 2:04:51.360 --> 2:04:56.440 That Dusty said to me, I want the hottest thing 2:04:56.480 --> 2:04:59.240 that they make. And I said, no, you don't. He 2:04:59.320 --> 2:05:04.280 said no do I said no, you definitely don't. So 2:05:04.400 --> 2:05:06.640 when they were the guy came out to take the orders, 2:05:06.680 --> 2:05:08.440 he said to the waiter, he said, what's the hottest 2:05:08.480 --> 2:05:10.480 curring you make? And the guy looked at him and 2:05:10.480 --> 2:05:14.000 he said, it's called a Bangla file. If any of 2:05:14.040 --> 2:05:19.000 your listeners do not have the So he orders the 2:05:19.040 --> 2:05:23.360 Bangla file and the entire kitchen staff came out to 2:05:23.440 --> 2:05:31.839 watch him eat it. It took one mouthful, it turned 2:05:32.200 --> 2:05:35.680 a completely different color that human beings are supposed to be. 2:05:37.960 --> 2:05:42.080 And he literally ran to the bathroom and for two 2:05:42.080 --> 2:05:45.960 and a half hours he remained in the bathroom and 2:05:46.040 --> 2:05:51.520 we could hear through the door gurglings and plops and groaning, 2:05:51.920 --> 2:05:59.240 and finally a kind of called to prayer. And when 2:05:59.280 --> 2:06:01.840 he came out, he was half the size of the 2:06:01.880 --> 2:06:04.680 person who had gone in. And they had a gig 2:06:04.720 --> 2:06:08.440 the next day, and poor Dusty had he had very 2:06:08.440 --> 2:06:10.840 short say, he had contact lenses. He forgot to put 2:06:10.840 --> 2:06:13.200 his contact lenses in because he was in such a 2:06:13.240 --> 2:06:17.720 panic that something was going to happen on stage. And 2:06:17.800 --> 2:06:19.680 every time he walked up to the microphone, he hit 2:06:19.720 --> 2:06:22.880 the microphone hit him on the head with an incredibly 2:06:22.960 --> 2:06:26.840 loud donk through the PA and Billy could pardly play 2:06:26.880 --> 2:06:32.960 for laughing, and uh, well there's no more to the story, really, 2:06:33.000 --> 2:06:36.080 but that's my little Easy's top story because he couldn't. 2:06:36.360 --> 2:06:41.560 He absolutely thought he was going to die. So funny, 2:06:41.920 --> 2:06:44.040 So don't have the bang of file. Sorry, what was 2:06:44.080 --> 2:06:45.240 your question before? 2:06:45.520 --> 2:06:51.120 Well, we're making the Brothers and Arms album. 2:06:51.200 --> 2:06:54.120 Yeah, so they basically went down rehearsed. I heard money 2:06:54.120 --> 2:07:00.720 for Nothing. I didn't. I never listened to records from 2:07:00.720 --> 2:07:03.720 a commercial point of view, honestly. I mean maybe as 2:07:03.720 --> 2:07:05.480 a manager I should have done, but I didn't. I 2:07:05.560 --> 2:07:09.480 just listen. Do I like it. I like to work 2:07:09.520 --> 2:07:12.520 with artists that I liked. The most important thing to 2:07:12.560 --> 2:07:15.280 me about all the artists I worked with, other than 2:07:15.360 --> 2:07:17.440 the fact that I liked them enough to get on 2:07:17.520 --> 2:07:21.000 with them, was that they were great songwriters. You had 2:07:21.040 --> 2:07:23.280 Paul Brady on your show a few weeks ago, I 2:07:23.320 --> 2:07:27.680 mean another of my clients. Fantastic writer and a great guy, 2:07:28.000 --> 2:07:34.280 I mean, a really great guy. And people like Brian Ferry, 2:07:34.320 --> 2:07:37.760 I mean, is Brian's a genius songwriter to me? So 2:07:39.680 --> 2:07:44.240 I wasn't. Particularly the song on that album which I 2:07:44.280 --> 2:07:48.320 heard in rehearsal, which I just loved was the title song, 2:07:48.640 --> 2:07:52.280 the Brothers and Arms song, And at the time, we 2:07:52.280 --> 2:07:57.040 were going through the Falklands War, which is what that 2:07:57.160 --> 2:08:02.920 song was about. It was very I mean, Dostras hardly 2:08:03.080 --> 2:08:08.640 be called a political group, but that was quite a 2:08:09.000 --> 2:08:13.960 moving song given that we had troops out there being 2:08:14.040 --> 2:08:16.960 blown up and the Argentinians were getting blown up as well, 2:08:20.760 --> 2:08:25.920 and one song nearly didn't make it onto it. That 2:08:26.040 --> 2:08:29.160 was Walk of Life. I walked into the studio in 2:08:29.240 --> 2:08:34.920 New York and Mark and Neil Drsman were mixing it. 2:08:35.760 --> 2:08:41.600 I hadn't heard it. And as I think I might 2:08:41.680 --> 2:08:43.320 have mentioned earlier, Mark was a big fan of the 2:08:43.360 --> 2:08:48.240 animals and he happened to like Alan Price's far Feasta 2:08:48.480 --> 2:08:52.200 organ sound and he'd got this deed did he did? Did? 2:08:52.240 --> 2:08:57.120 He did lick at the beginning. And I was listening 2:08:57.160 --> 2:09:00.720 to it and I said, what's this and Mark said, oh, 2:09:00.760 --> 2:09:03.400 it's a B side, because back then we had B sides. 2:09:04.480 --> 2:09:07.240 And I said that's a hit song. No it's not. 2:09:08.360 --> 2:09:11.120 And we had a bit of a debate, not an argument, 2:09:12.160 --> 2:09:17.840 and Neil Drsman's going, yeah, it's right, and Mark went no, 2:09:18.680 --> 2:09:21.000 I said, listen, he said. I said, so it's good 2:09:21.120 --> 2:09:24.160 enough to be a B side and people can hear it, 2:09:24.240 --> 2:09:25.920 but it's not good enough to go on the record. 2:09:27.080 --> 2:09:30.320 And he went, oh, all right. Then that song outsold 2:09:30.360 --> 2:09:34.720 money for nothing worldwide, and it's used in all these 2:09:34.720 --> 2:09:39.920 football commercials in America and what have you. Sometimes, I mean, 2:09:39.960 --> 2:09:43.760 I don't think of myself as being credited with anything 2:09:43.800 --> 2:09:46.560 other than my personal musical taste. That's the only thing 2:09:46.600 --> 2:09:50.760 that I bring to this. I don't listen to pop 2:09:50.880 --> 2:09:55.280 radio and I haven't in years. I don't know. I'm 2:09:55.280 --> 2:10:01.800 not thinking, oh, we need hits. One of my closest 2:10:01.800 --> 2:10:04.440 friends is a songwriter called Nikki Chin who wrote most 2:10:04.440 --> 2:10:07.240 of those glam rockets with Mike Chapman. And had dinner 2:10:07.240 --> 2:10:09.240 with him last night and he said to me we 2:10:09.320 --> 2:10:14.280 had fifty hits. Really, I said, I can only think 2:10:14.280 --> 2:10:20.440 of five of them. And he's like, because I always 2:10:20.480 --> 2:10:25.760 introduced him to people, Britain's worst songwriter by far is terrible. 2:10:26.800 --> 2:10:29.760 I mean, who could write? Can they can? Forkingness sake? 2:10:32.240 --> 2:10:38.040 So we had that record. As always happens in these situations, 2:10:39.120 --> 2:10:42.480 the album cover was a complete accident. Somebody's waving that 2:10:42.560 --> 2:10:45.640 National steel about and I can't remember the lady who 2:10:45.680 --> 2:10:51.280 took the pictures, but stuck a shot and we delivered it. 2:10:51.360 --> 2:10:55.000 And I had this whole world tour set up because 2:10:55.040 --> 2:10:57.160 by this time I had a pretty good idea of 2:10:57.720 --> 2:11:01.080 where we could play, the level we could play, and 2:11:01.280 --> 2:11:03.400 where we needed to go where we hadn't been before. 2:11:03.480 --> 2:11:05.040 Because one of the things you have to do with 2:11:05.120 --> 2:11:09.280 any band is keep it interesting and when you go. 2:11:09.840 --> 2:11:12.320 We were the first really big band to go and 2:11:12.360 --> 2:11:15.240 play in Israel. I mean sadly we couldn't do that 2:11:15.280 --> 2:11:18.120 obviously at the moment, but we played to a quarter 2:11:18.160 --> 2:11:22.080 of the population over three shows and they were going gaga, 2:11:22.360 --> 2:11:27.040 I mean completely bonkers, because nobody went and played in Israel. 2:11:27.880 --> 2:11:30.840 And yea, I used to find these promoters, mostly under 2:11:30.840 --> 2:11:36.640 a stone somewhere and they would we playing on that tour. 2:11:36.720 --> 2:11:38.960 We played that. We started in Israel, and then we 2:11:39.000 --> 2:11:43.280 went to Greece, then we went to the old Yugoslavia 2:11:43.840 --> 2:11:45.960 and worked our way up and so on and so forth. 2:11:46.440 --> 2:11:54.240 And we had my partner, Sadie doesn't believe in the 2:11:54.600 --> 2:11:58.880 idea of luck. She calls it perfect alignment. And I 2:11:58.960 --> 2:12:03.560 always think yeah, and we that was a wonderful piece 2:12:03.600 --> 2:12:06.720 of perfect alignment, which was not intended to be so. 2:12:07.000 --> 2:12:10.160 And that was doing live aid when we had money 2:12:10.200 --> 2:12:14.560 for nothing out with Sting. Oh you asked me how 2:12:14.600 --> 2:12:23.640 Sting appeared on that record. He was on the island surfing. Well, 2:12:23.680 --> 2:12:25.360 not on the island. He went in the sea for that. 2:12:26.080 --> 2:12:30.840 And the best place to eat on the island was 2:12:30.880 --> 2:12:34.040 the studio. There was a great chef up at George 2:12:34.040 --> 2:12:39.919 Martin studio, and one night he showed up in Monsrat 2:12:40.000 --> 2:12:43.840 Yes and Mark said, Tom, I've written I've written this 2:12:43.920 --> 2:12:47.160 really stupid song about MTV. You fancy playing on it? 2:12:48.400 --> 2:12:54.000 And Gordon as we call him, said yeah. So they 2:12:54.000 --> 2:12:56.640 went downstairs into the studio and just came up with 2:12:56.680 --> 2:13:00.720 the idea of sticking I Want my MTV on the 2:13:00.760 --> 2:13:03.800 front to the tune of Don't Stand So Close to 2:13:03.840 --> 2:13:09.600 Me and we had a we had How long did 2:13:09.600 --> 2:13:12.800 that take? Half an hour? I don't know, It's just 2:13:12.840 --> 2:13:15.280 one of those things. Sorry. I was just going to 2:13:15.320 --> 2:13:20.840 say that in pop music, spontaneity it's very difficult. You 2:13:20.960 --> 2:13:25.000 can't engineer spontaneity because of the definition of the word. 2:13:25.880 --> 2:13:32.800 But spontaneity is often produces a great result. And that 2:13:33.000 --> 2:13:33.320 was one. 2:13:40.800 --> 2:13:44.080 Okay, the record is done. At what point do you 2:13:44.160 --> 2:13:47.120 decide to make a video for money for nothing? And 2:13:47.200 --> 2:13:50.320 how does it become the video? It is one of 2:13:50.360 --> 2:13:52.600 the most iconic videos of the empty. 2:13:53.520 --> 2:14:01.520 Right, Okay, Well, it was pretty obvious to everybody. And 2:14:01.560 --> 2:14:04.520 I remember right at the beginning when I very first 2:14:04.560 --> 2:14:11.280 played that album to the record company people, and first 2:14:11.320 --> 2:14:15.400 it would have been the UK company. Everybody, you know, 2:14:15.560 --> 2:14:23.600 everybody jumped on that particular track, and we were because 2:14:23.680 --> 2:14:27.360 the whole thing, because everything had overrun. We were in 2:14:27.400 --> 2:14:32.400 a real time jam we had and we were doing 2:14:32.480 --> 2:14:35.280 various tax things and so on and so forth. We 2:14:35.360 --> 2:14:40.280 had to leave the country by March the thirty first 2:14:40.360 --> 2:14:46.080 of nineteen eighty five, so we had to make the 2:14:46.280 --> 2:14:56.560 video while we were on tour, and we had contacted 2:14:56.640 --> 2:15:02.560 Steve Barron, who had, amongst other things, shot Beat It 2:15:03.040 --> 2:15:09.760 for Michael Jackson, and we were looking for somebody to 2:15:09.880 --> 2:15:13.480 play the role of the redneck guy in the store. 2:15:14.440 --> 2:15:17.040 And I tried to think of the two biggest American 2:15:17.120 --> 2:15:19.200 rednecks I could come up with, and one of them 2:15:19.280 --> 2:15:25.640 was Buddy Rich and the other one was very dry 2:15:25.760 --> 2:15:30.360 comedian you've got when he's passed on what was his name, 2:15:30.480 --> 2:15:34.960 can't remember, and they both of course flipped it back 2:15:35.880 --> 2:15:39.840 and Steve came up with, well, he didn't come up 2:15:39.880 --> 2:15:44.840 with it, but he showed us that computer stuff, which 2:15:44.880 --> 2:15:49.440 was brand new then, which got around the problem of 2:15:49.480 --> 2:15:51.800 having somebody a redneck in it, because we could have 2:15:51.840 --> 2:15:56.400 a cartoon redneck, which is what we had. So we 2:15:56.520 --> 2:15:58.760 basically said yes, and he went off and he made 2:15:58.800 --> 2:16:03.200 that clip and the live sections were all shot at 2:16:03.200 --> 2:16:07.840 a sound check and a gig in Budapest, and the 2:16:07.880 --> 2:16:13.480 girl who's in it was Miss Hungary. Can't write this, 2:16:13.640 --> 2:16:13.960 can you? 2:16:14.680 --> 2:16:20.080 Okay? I bought the album day came out. I knew 2:16:20.120 --> 2:16:26.520 money for nothing before it hit MTV. But this kick 2:16:27.120 --> 2:16:30.000 as big as Dire Streets was. They kicked the whole 2:16:30.040 --> 2:16:33.440 thing into the stratosphere. So what was it like on 2:16:33.600 --> 2:16:35.080 your red. 2:16:39.879 --> 2:16:42.879 I'm going to say something that you It was funny. 2:16:44.520 --> 2:16:49.360 It was really funny. We'd been slogging away and climbing 2:16:49.440 --> 2:16:55.720 up the greasy pole and each step and suddenly we 2:16:55.920 --> 2:16:59.640 have a hit record with a lyric which is basically 2:17:02.000 --> 2:17:06.160 it's not a comedy record. But and it was written 2:17:06.920 --> 2:17:11.240 because he went into an electronics store down in Greenwich 2:17:11.320 --> 2:17:15.360 Village that's going to place down there, and there were 2:17:15.400 --> 2:17:18.880 these guys having this conversation and he just he got 2:17:18.920 --> 2:17:22.280 up a piece of Off Blokes notepad and he went 2:17:22.320 --> 2:17:26.360 and sat in the window display and he just listened. 2:17:26.840 --> 2:17:30.080 And he said to me he couldn't quite remember he 2:17:30.160 --> 2:17:32.040 thought of the band that was on the TV at 2:17:32.080 --> 2:17:34.280 the time, because of course they had fifty TVs all 2:17:34.320 --> 2:17:36.920 played on TV and he thought it was Motley Crue, 2:17:38.440 --> 2:17:42.879 something that my dear friend Dot McGee was very chuffed about. 2:17:43.400 --> 2:17:52.280 And so we had this tour that's totally sold out 2:17:52.760 --> 2:17:57.920 before we've even started. We've got this record, we've got 2:17:58.400 --> 2:18:02.959 some reasonably good art work, I suppose from dastress point 2:18:02.959 --> 2:18:06.560 of view, and we had this video which was, as 2:18:06.600 --> 2:18:09.640 you say, a bit of it was the first one 2:18:09.680 --> 2:18:14.600 ever played on MTV UK when they opened the station, 2:18:15.160 --> 2:18:20.840 and we had radio going nuts for it. So everything 2:18:20.879 --> 2:18:25.199 that had happened previously kind of got us to there, 2:18:26.400 --> 2:18:29.920 and the tour just took off. I mean it just 2:18:30.200 --> 2:18:30.760 took off. 2:18:31.840 --> 2:18:35.600 Well, people don't realize because of course, you know, this 2:18:35.760 --> 2:18:38.879 was by time we hit eighty five. It's no longer 2:18:38.920 --> 2:18:41.920 the advent of MTV. People had certain things. You spend 2:18:41.920 --> 2:18:45.199 the money, you have looked, you have outfits. We people 2:18:45.360 --> 2:18:49.800 didn't realize in America then and for a few years after, 2:18:50.160 --> 2:18:55.160 the Dire Strait was the biggest band in the world 2:18:55.920 --> 2:18:59.560 that could sell more tickets in anybody else around the world. 2:19:02.800 --> 2:19:05.760 Yeah. Probably no, I mean. 2:19:05.640 --> 2:19:09.039 You would see the stadium grosses. Let's not forget. Dire 2:19:09.120 --> 2:19:12.480 Streets didn't tick the boxes of the emptyv era when 2:19:12.520 --> 2:19:16.039 most of their success was No, it wasn't about flash, 2:19:16.080 --> 2:19:19.120 it wasn't about good looking guys. It wasn't about you know, 2:19:19.280 --> 2:19:24.039 syndromes or et cetera. So to have this, I mean, 2:19:24.200 --> 2:19:27.480 we should have such a thing today. 2:19:28.280 --> 2:19:32.440 Yeah. Yeah, but I'll tell you something, Bob, it's funny. 2:19:32.520 --> 2:19:34.920 And I don't know how many other people like me 2:19:35.040 --> 2:19:37.960 you've I know, you've interviewed a lot. When you're in 2:19:38.000 --> 2:19:42.560 the middle of it, you don't really you can't stand back. 2:19:43.800 --> 2:19:49.560 You're thinking more about tomorrow or are the trucks gonna 2:19:49.560 --> 2:19:54.800 break down? If you're a warrior or a very hands 2:19:54.800 --> 2:19:58.800 on person, which I am, and I don't consider that's 2:19:58.800 --> 2:20:01.119 the plus. By the way, I think that the biggest 2:20:01.160 --> 2:20:06.199 mistake I did. I didn't delegate enough. I was too 2:20:09.240 --> 2:20:16.199 I I was too detail oriented. I mean, don't forget 2:20:16.240 --> 2:20:18.680 I wasn't using an agent anywhere except the US, so 2:20:18.760 --> 2:20:24.040 I was doing all of that, dealing with all these promoters. 2:20:24.600 --> 2:20:27.440 But yeah, we had. That was an amazing experience. I mean, 2:20:27.520 --> 2:20:34.840 in terms of my life today, that would be top 2:20:34.959 --> 2:20:39.000 That's the greatest experience of my life other than you know, 2:20:39.720 --> 2:20:42.560 the birth of my kids. Things like that, and it 2:20:45.920 --> 2:20:48.520 and it was and it was so it was a 2:20:48.600 --> 2:20:54.520 very joyful experience. Everybody was getting on, everybody loved what 2:20:54.600 --> 2:20:58.240 they were doing. We had a fantastic crew, well the 2:20:58.320 --> 2:21:01.199 same people we always had, great front of our sound, 2:21:01.400 --> 2:21:06.800 great Chas. Herrington's lights were super. Every show was an event. 2:21:07.680 --> 2:21:09.760 I think if you're a manager, one of the best 2:21:09.760 --> 2:21:12.080 things you can do is try and create an event 2:21:12.480 --> 2:21:17.440 for the audience. And every one of our shows was 2:21:17.440 --> 2:21:19.520 an event. And when we got to Australia where we 2:21:19.600 --> 2:21:22.879 ended up for three months, which is ridiculous, and we 2:21:22.959 --> 2:21:26.880 sold over a million tickets and only little Ed Sheeran 2:21:26.959 --> 2:21:33.040 has managed more. He sold five tickets more than us. 2:21:34.400 --> 2:21:36.560 The biggest show we ever did was one hundred and 2:21:36.560 --> 2:21:44.200 two thousand people in Auckland with no support act. The 2:21:44.600 --> 2:21:47.240 actual capacity of the place was sixty thousand. And when 2:21:47.280 --> 2:21:51.119 we got there Gary van Egmund, the promoter who sadly 2:21:51.200 --> 2:21:55.000 passed away about two months ago, he came up running 2:21:55.040 --> 2:21:58.920 up to me because it had taken ages to get 2:21:58.920 --> 2:22:02.800 into the actual vein because of the people outside. He said, 2:22:02.840 --> 2:22:04.800 can you hold a show for a couple of hours? 2:22:04.959 --> 2:22:09.800 I said sure. He said, we've found all of these 2:22:09.920 --> 2:22:13.760 rolls of cloakroom tickets in the back of this place. 2:22:14.320 --> 2:22:23.200 It was a stock car racing stadium. We sold thirty nine, 2:22:23.680 --> 2:22:28.560 six hundred and thirty two cloakroom tickets to the people outside. 2:22:30.400 --> 2:22:33.600 Explain to the American audience what a cloakroom ticket is. 2:22:33.640 --> 2:22:36.280 Oh, if you put your coat in, If you come 2:22:36.280 --> 2:22:39.560 in a coat, give it to somebody and they'll hang 2:22:39.600 --> 2:22:42.160 it on a hook. And in exchange for your incredibly 2:22:42.160 --> 2:22:45.400 expensive mink coat, you'll get a small piece of paper 2:22:45.400 --> 2:22:48.800 with a number on it which you can claim when 2:22:48.840 --> 2:22:49.240 you leave. 2:22:51.000 --> 2:22:53.759 So where were these people They were in the cloakroom. 2:22:54.280 --> 2:22:57.720 No, no, no, the audience I'm talking about were outside. 2:22:57.760 --> 2:23:00.800 They hadn't got tickets. They'd come along on the chance 2:23:00.879 --> 2:23:07.160 they could get a ticket, and ticket touting secondary ticketing 2:23:07.720 --> 2:23:10.800 was not known in Australia New Zealand at the time. 2:23:11.400 --> 2:23:14.720 So these forty people had shown up on the off 2:23:14.920 --> 2:23:17.040 chance they could get in or they could hear it 2:23:17.120 --> 2:23:21.320 from outside because it was an outdoor show. And I 2:23:21.360 --> 2:23:23.720 had a promoter, one of the best we worked with, 2:23:23.840 --> 2:23:29.560 by far, who had the intelligence and creativity to go 2:23:29.920 --> 2:23:32.960 figure out, how can I do this? And they went 2:23:33.680 --> 2:23:36.960 looking around and they found all of these little they're 2:23:37.040 --> 2:23:42.120 just little paper tickets. So they sold those. So we 2:23:42.440 --> 2:23:45.920 in the two hours and it was an amazing, amazing show, 2:23:46.360 --> 2:23:49.120 because of course it is. I mean when you're when 2:23:49.160 --> 2:23:51.160 you're doing something like that, and I would go in 2:23:51.200 --> 2:23:53.160 the dressing room and I'd say to the band, you're 2:23:53.160 --> 2:23:56.720 not going to believe this, And there was quite a 2:23:56.720 --> 2:23:59.720 lot of you're not going to believe this in their career. 2:24:01.879 --> 2:24:04.480 You know, Princess Diana wants to wants to just do 2:24:04.600 --> 2:24:09.920 a concert for her. Okay, So Hewitt, that's Jim. It 2:24:09.920 --> 2:24:12.960 was king chance as he is now. And we did 2:24:14.440 --> 2:24:18.119 I mean every where we went. The mistake we made, 2:24:19.040 --> 2:24:21.440 but it wasn't mistake. We should have come back to 2:24:21.520 --> 2:24:25.040 the States, but people we'd been We've played two hundred 2:24:25.040 --> 2:24:27.360 and forty eight shows in twelve months, and people were 2:24:27.600 --> 2:24:32.400 at a point of caving in. So we didn't. 2:24:34.000 --> 2:24:41.959 Okay, you make another album on every street. Artistically very strong, 2:24:42.080 --> 2:24:45.480 nothing could sell as many copies, you know, Michael Jackson, 2:24:45.920 --> 2:24:49.760 you know, failed to constantly try to reach the peaks 2:24:49.760 --> 2:24:54.320 of Thriller. But it was both artistically in a commercial success. 2:24:54.760 --> 2:24:59.600 What was that experience and why was that the last record? Right? 2:25:00.200 --> 2:25:03.520 I'll just preface that by saying that up to now, 2:25:03.720 --> 2:25:06.360 I don't know the streaming numbers, but the Brothers in 2:25:06.480 --> 2:25:11.320 Arms record as a physical product sold about thirty six million. 2:25:13.520 --> 2:25:19.600 And after it and after that tour, there was a 2:25:19.680 --> 2:25:26.440 hiatus which lasted about six years. Now, with hindsight, which 2:25:26.480 --> 2:25:31.720 is a blessed thing, indeed, that was too long for 2:25:31.800 --> 2:25:35.320 a lot of reasons, and one was that the music 2:25:35.480 --> 2:25:40.800 scene had changed quite drastically, and if I simply mentioned 2:25:40.879 --> 2:25:45.080 Nirvana and Pearl Jam, that really. 2:25:47.680 --> 2:25:47.840 So. 2:25:48.600 --> 2:25:51.359 But we had a very big and a very loyal 2:25:51.760 --> 2:26:02.280 fan base, and I with hindsight, as I say, in 2:26:02.320 --> 2:26:08.039 a way, I wish we'd stopped with the Brothers record, 2:26:09.840 --> 2:26:13.760 But that's with hindsight. What we did do to fill 2:26:13.840 --> 2:26:21.439 that gap was complete a contractual requirement. It wasn't contractual, 2:26:21.480 --> 2:26:25.400 nobody was forcing it, and certainly we were in a 2:26:25.400 --> 2:26:28.080 position to choose the timing. But we put out a 2:26:28.120 --> 2:26:34.760 best of the Greatest Hits which sold fifteen million. And 2:26:34.840 --> 2:26:40.720 I'm just sitting there going this is just ridiculous. So 2:26:43.480 --> 2:26:50.120 and Mark was doing bits and pieces and I'm going 2:26:50.200 --> 2:26:52.520 to say something here which if he was sitting in 2:26:52.520 --> 2:26:54.960 front of him, he might well disagree with me. I 2:26:55.000 --> 2:27:01.000 don't know. I think for any artists when you have 2:27:01.080 --> 2:27:04.640 an app when you have one of those big single records, 2:27:04.840 --> 2:27:12.040 Dark Side of the Moon, the Saturday Night Fever is 2:27:12.040 --> 2:27:14.560 a really bad example, but Back in Black would be 2:27:14.600 --> 2:27:21.400 another one. They're great to have in every sense. And 2:27:21.480 --> 2:27:26.800 I don't mean the income, I mean just but they 2:27:26.840 --> 2:27:30.960 create this expectation and I'm stating the obvious right now, 2:27:32.080 --> 2:27:36.840 and I think that I got a bit intimidated by that. 2:27:37.000 --> 2:27:42.480 I think anybody would, because what happens when you have 2:27:42.480 --> 2:27:44.760 a big record like that is, first of all, your 2:27:44.800 --> 2:27:49.119 audience changes a bit. People start coming to shows who 2:27:49.120 --> 2:27:54.240 are not necessarily distraates music fans. They're becoming because it's 2:27:54.280 --> 2:27:57.520 the hip and relevant thing to be doing. They want 2:27:57.560 --> 2:28:04.120 to be seen. You start selling tickets in catered skyboxes. 2:28:05.520 --> 2:28:14.320 All of that element comes in. And what am with 2:28:14.480 --> 2:28:22.680 the on every Street record? Do you know? I'm trying 2:28:22.720 --> 2:28:25.959 to remember how that even got underway? Oh, I know 2:28:26.040 --> 2:28:36.160 what happened. We were having a conversation. There were some 2:28:36.280 --> 2:28:40.720 people in the organization and I'm including somebody in my 2:28:40.800 --> 2:28:49.640 office who were deciding to sort of leave. And the 2:28:49.680 --> 2:28:55.440 line was I kind of there's nothing going on I'm 2:28:55.480 --> 2:29:03.120 wasting my life and I was getting a bit. But 2:29:03.240 --> 2:29:08.879 on the other hand, I had things like the chet 2:29:08.879 --> 2:29:13.560 Atkins record and you know, to go to Nashville to 2:29:13.560 --> 2:29:16.440 meet chat Atkins and end up having you know, dinner 2:29:16.480 --> 2:29:19.400 with Scottie Moore and DJ Fontana and the whole thing 2:29:19.400 --> 2:29:22.840 that goes with that. And I'm a groupie at the 2:29:22.920 --> 2:29:24.760 end of the day, I'm a groupie for the stuff 2:29:24.800 --> 2:29:29.640 I grew up listening to. I mean, when I met 2:29:29.680 --> 2:29:32.480 Buddy Rich, I didn't I couldn't speak, which is just 2:29:32.520 --> 2:29:42.880 as well because he couldn't stop. And so there was 2:29:42.920 --> 2:29:46.920 a camera point when one particular person basically said I'm leaving, 2:29:47.040 --> 2:29:53.039 and I said, you need to tell Mark and John. 2:29:55.320 --> 2:29:57.280 Mark and John John. John had done a couple of 2:29:57.280 --> 2:30:04.920 solo records which were so so, and we went to 2:30:05.040 --> 2:30:10.680 a little a burger place called Tutsis in Holland Park 2:30:10.720 --> 2:30:15.840 in London, and my colleague said to Mark, I'm done, 2:30:16.040 --> 2:30:21.320 I'm going to go, and Mark said, he says, I 2:30:21.320 --> 2:30:24.199 don't want you to leave, and this guy said, well, 2:30:24.440 --> 2:30:29.039 you know, there's nothing happening, and and Mark suddenly said, 2:30:29.120 --> 2:30:31.600 completely out of the blue, you could have you could 2:30:31.600 --> 2:30:35.240 have literally locked me over with a feather. He said, well, actually, 2:30:35.240 --> 2:30:37.760 I've got some songs together. Why don't we get the 2:30:37.760 --> 2:30:42.080 band back together and do it with the band? And 2:30:42.160 --> 2:30:47.440 I remember saying, no disrespect to so and so, but 2:30:47.600 --> 2:30:50.320 that is a ridiculous reason for doing a record, to 2:30:50.320 --> 2:30:56.400 get somebody to stay. And he said, to please the 2:30:56.440 --> 2:30:59.720 other guy much and Mark said yeah, he said, but 2:30:59.760 --> 2:31:01.840 you know, it's what I do best, It's why I 2:31:01.920 --> 2:31:12.840 enjoy doing the most. So he told we got everybody 2:31:12.840 --> 2:31:21.160 back together, and they went into rehearsals. And by this 2:31:21.240 --> 2:31:25.920 time he had been seduced, if you like, by the 2:31:26.040 --> 2:31:32.560 Nashville scene, which I had very mixed feelings about. I 2:31:32.640 --> 2:31:37.039 have no issue at all with musicians making money professionally, 2:31:37.040 --> 2:31:40.120 that's what they do. But it was quite apparent to 2:31:40.160 --> 2:31:45.160 me that the amount of stroking that was going on 2:31:45.240 --> 2:31:50.520 in Nashville from people there in Mart's direction was not 2:31:50.879 --> 2:31:54.520 because they thought his music was great. But he was 2:31:54.560 --> 2:31:58.879 a big rock star who'd come to town and it 2:31:59.000 --> 2:32:01.680 was very possible that they could probably hitch a ride, 2:32:02.640 --> 2:32:05.720 and quite a lot of them did, and they're great 2:32:06.200 --> 2:32:12.680 people and great players. But he was very I think 2:32:12.720 --> 2:32:18.439 a little bit naive about that. And anyway, that influence, 2:32:19.000 --> 2:32:21.600 and particularly in the form of Paul Franklin, who was 2:32:21.600 --> 2:32:27.280 playing pedal steel guitar extremely well, am I add at 2:32:27.320 --> 2:32:29.600 not in Hillbery sound checks. He and I used to 2:32:29.640 --> 2:32:31.800 play just we'd just go on the stage together, just 2:32:31.879 --> 2:32:35.200 me and and play Orange Blossom Special as fast as 2:32:35.200 --> 2:32:38.360 we could possibly play it, and every sound check it 2:32:38.400 --> 2:32:43.040 would get faster and faster and faster. So Paul came 2:32:43.080 --> 2:32:45.720 into the group and they made that record which had 2:32:45.760 --> 2:32:48.520 this sort of bit of a country flavor to it, 2:32:49.680 --> 2:32:55.280 and on a personal level, I didn't think that it 2:32:55.480 --> 2:33:00.000 was not that it wasn't as commercial as Brothers and Arms. 2:33:00.320 --> 2:33:02.480 I didn't think it was as good an album as 2:33:02.480 --> 2:33:05.680 some of the ones we've done in the past. I 2:33:05.720 --> 2:33:10.560 thought there were some tracks on it that were fault fillers. 2:33:11.640 --> 2:33:15.360 Calling Elvis to me is a lazy song. I love 2:33:15.400 --> 2:33:18.680 the guitar sound on that, Yeah, yeah, hang on. There's 2:33:18.680 --> 2:33:21.560 a qualification to that, which is that that which was 2:33:21.680 --> 2:33:27.240 saved by Jeff Paccaro bless him, I r I p 2:33:28.400 --> 2:33:31.720 and by Mart's guitar playing on it, but doing a song, 2:33:33.480 --> 2:33:36.680 you know, waffling on with Elvis's song titles. It's a 2:33:36.680 --> 2:33:42.800 bit lazy to me. I really liked the title track. 2:33:43.680 --> 2:33:46.040 I thought You and Your Friend, which is the one 2:33:46.280 --> 2:33:55.240 with the Doughbra solo on it was brilliant. But well, 2:33:55.360 --> 2:33:56.920 that's what I had to work with when you're a man, 2:33:56.959 --> 2:34:00.720 and you know we're talking relative here, because most managers 2:34:00.720 --> 2:34:04.039 don't get a record like that in their lives to 2:34:04.160 --> 2:34:11.039 work with. And we and I made a mistake, and 2:34:11.080 --> 2:34:13.879 it was it was made in good faith. I over 2:34:14.120 --> 2:34:19.359 egged the size of the venues and night and multiple 2:34:19.520 --> 2:34:23.240 night things that we were planning to do. And in 2:34:23.280 --> 2:34:33.080 some countries it worked. UK, Europe no problem. Australia was okay, 2:34:33.879 --> 2:34:37.560 but it was we've kind of left it too long 2:34:37.680 --> 2:34:44.400 in a way, and the US was not good. I 2:34:44.440 --> 2:34:49.760 mean we were okay in on the two coasts and 2:34:49.879 --> 2:34:56.680 in Canada, but the middle, it was the middle was 2:34:56.720 --> 2:35:00.200 a you needed a hit single kind of thing, get 2:35:00.240 --> 2:35:04.840 over in Kansas. But that's you know, I mean, it 2:35:04.959 --> 2:35:07.960 sold seven million tickets, so people would say, oh, what 2:35:08.000 --> 2:35:11.720 are you moaning about, But it's just I think that's 2:35:11.760 --> 2:35:14.440 to do with the pride that you have in your 2:35:14.520 --> 2:35:18.800 work and trying to get things right in what is 2:35:18.879 --> 2:35:23.200 an incredibly speculative kind of thing. And what a lot 2:35:23.200 --> 2:35:25.360 of other people. A lot of people don't realize, and 2:35:25.400 --> 2:35:29.360 certainly the audience didn't realize. When you're working with a 2:35:29.400 --> 2:35:32.280 band at that level, you're planning at least a year ahead, 2:35:32.600 --> 2:35:35.200 probably eighteen months. And there was one thing, of course, 2:35:35.240 --> 2:35:37.720 that I could never have anticipated, and that was the 2:35:37.720 --> 2:35:42.760 outbreak of the goal, for which totally stuffed us because 2:35:43.120 --> 2:35:47.560 I had to I had done put nearly the whole 2:35:47.560 --> 2:35:50.000 thing together, and I had to dump it all and 2:35:50.080 --> 2:35:53.119 start again. I put that tour together twice. 2:35:54.320 --> 2:35:56.720 Okay, So how many dates were there on that tour. 2:35:56.760 --> 2:36:01.440 Two hundred and that one? I think it was about 2:36:01.440 --> 2:36:03.360 two hundred and thirty five. 2:36:03.800 --> 2:36:06.879 Okay, you play the two hundred and thirtieth date. Everybody's 2:36:06.959 --> 2:36:10.560 worn out. Yeah. Do you have a sense that this 2:36:10.720 --> 2:36:13.400 is it? Or you do? 2:36:14.959 --> 2:36:21.280 I canceled South America and South Africa because I didn't 2:36:21.320 --> 2:36:24.840 think i'd have a band to do it. Inter Band 2:36:24.920 --> 2:36:36.520 relationships were fraught in the extreme because because our leader 2:36:37.000 --> 2:36:43.720 was not a happy bunny, and he was, there was 2:36:43.760 --> 2:36:48.800 an awful lot going something that people who are fans 2:36:48.840 --> 2:36:52.080 of popular music and love their particular act, be it 2:36:52.600 --> 2:37:00.760 Coldplay or whoever, can never know the impact that personal 2:37:01.280 --> 2:37:07.600 relationships outside of a band and marriage is what I'm 2:37:07.640 --> 2:37:12.680 thinking of the impact that they have on the artistic side. 2:37:13.920 --> 2:37:17.520 It's huge, and it was huge in that case. It 2:37:17.680 --> 2:37:22.160 was a very very very difficult period because people's personal 2:37:22.200 --> 2:37:23.760 lives were in tatus. 2:37:31.280 --> 2:37:35.840 Okay, so the tour stops. Is there ever a conscious 2:37:35.879 --> 2:37:38.240 decision to say we're done, we're not going to go 2:37:38.280 --> 2:37:41.760 out as dire streets or it just never happened again. 2:37:41.840 --> 2:37:48.080 No nobody ever told me. When they finished in a 2:37:48.160 --> 2:37:53.480 town in called Zaragotho or Zaragoza in Spain, they left 2:37:53.520 --> 2:37:57.640 the stage, they got on the private plane back to 2:37:58.120 --> 2:38:01.760 Barcelona where we were staying. Nobody spoke to each other. 2:38:02.360 --> 2:38:05.200 There was no end of tour party, There was no 2:38:05.360 --> 2:38:10.680 end of tour goodbyes. There were no hugs. Everybody went 2:38:10.680 --> 2:38:17.040 their separate ways. Chris Whitten, who was the drummer on 2:38:17.080 --> 2:38:19.480 that tour, who'd been with Paul McCartney up to that, 2:38:20.120 --> 2:38:21.840 has never spoken to Mark since. 2:38:24.040 --> 2:38:26.959 Was there that level of dissension and the animosity in 2:38:27.000 --> 2:38:27.680 the group. 2:38:27.640 --> 2:38:32.240 It was really bad. They might say that I'm completely 2:38:32.320 --> 2:38:35.120 wrong or that I'm exaggerating. I can only tell you 2:38:35.120 --> 2:38:37.600 that from my point of view, it was horrendous. We 2:38:37.680 --> 2:38:40.560 had gone from being at the top of the pile, 2:38:40.600 --> 2:38:46.280 as you've eloquently described. You See, the thing is that 2:38:46.320 --> 2:38:48.120 people look at it and they say, when you sold 2:38:48.160 --> 2:38:50.280 a lot of tickets and he made a lot of money, 2:38:51.120 --> 2:38:56.480 and that record did twelve million physical more. So, all 2:38:56.480 --> 2:39:03.720 of that statistically sounds great, but when when you're Paul 2:39:03.720 --> 2:39:06.720 Franklin was so miserable. When I went out to Barcelona 2:39:06.800 --> 2:39:08.199 at the end of that time, and I took Peter 2:39:08.320 --> 2:39:14.240 Grant with me, led Zeppelin's manager the last gigs, I 2:39:14.240 --> 2:39:18.800 think Peter ever went to him. And when I got there, 2:39:18.840 --> 2:39:21.880 the guys were having a day off before doing six 2:39:22.000 --> 2:39:25.080 nights in Barcelona, I think it was, And I asked 2:39:25.080 --> 2:39:29.760 our tour manager where Paul Franklin was. He said, oh, 2:39:29.760 --> 2:39:31.480 one days off, he said. He takes a load of 2:39:31.480 --> 2:39:34.640 sleeping pills and goes to bed and sleeps through so 2:39:34.680 --> 2:39:39.959 that he doesn't have to mix with anybody else. Ah, 2:39:40.280 --> 2:39:44.840 So it's like that. It was awful. The things I 2:39:44.840 --> 2:39:48.160 could tell you, not because I'm not not telling you 2:39:48.200 --> 2:39:52.680 because they're private, but because they're they're so awful that 2:39:53.120 --> 2:39:55.840 you and your audience would just go, oh, this guy's 2:39:55.879 --> 2:39:58.800 making this out. This is out. This starts straight. So 2:39:58.840 --> 2:40:02.200 I love their music, you know, just it was just 2:40:05.440 --> 2:40:08.400 I have worked over the many years of my career 2:40:08.480 --> 2:40:14.960 with bands which were I remember years and years ago, 2:40:15.280 --> 2:40:17.400 years and years ago, when Richie was still in the 2:40:17.440 --> 2:40:24.520 group Deep Purple, five cars, five dressing rooms didn't speak 2:40:24.520 --> 2:40:29.680 to each other, and Richie would frequently refuse point blank 2:40:29.720 --> 2:40:32.520 to play any guitar solos, so John Lord had to 2:40:32.560 --> 2:40:35.480 hunt the Hammond organ back was forwards across the stage. 2:40:39.040 --> 2:40:43.879 Uh black Sabbath who I happened to laugh. And they 2:40:43.920 --> 2:40:47.080 were great guys because they were so off the wall, 2:40:48.160 --> 2:40:54.520 but they were everybody's fighting and squabbling. I did a 2:40:54.560 --> 2:40:58.160 tour with an American band called War, who Eric Burdens 2:40:58.200 --> 2:41:00.680 sang with for a while. War could not have been 2:41:00.720 --> 2:41:06.080 more aptly named. They would regularly throw furniture at each other. 2:41:07.360 --> 2:41:10.000 There was always a bill for broken chairs and tables 2:41:10.040 --> 2:41:13.879 and crockery. I don't know what it is. I mean, 2:41:16.480 --> 2:41:19.640 somebody once said to me, if you got back into management, 2:41:20.120 --> 2:41:22.880 and that's not going to happen, no, But if you did, 2:41:23.280 --> 2:41:25.560 I said, I try and find a folks singer. It's 2:41:25.720 --> 2:41:31.640 just on their own who's unmarried. Just trust trust them, 2:41:32.080 --> 2:41:38.280 Ed Sheeran come and you know it just and the 2:41:38.320 --> 2:41:42.080 fact that the record, you know, there's a difference, a 2:41:42.240 --> 2:41:46.080 huge difference in our game between a hit record and 2:41:46.120 --> 2:41:51.959 a hot record. Brothers in Arms was on fire and 2:41:52.080 --> 2:41:54.800 on every street somebody had come along with a fire 2:41:54.840 --> 2:42:01.560 bucket and tipped it over it he didn't have And 2:42:01.600 --> 2:42:06.280 we were in Adelaide. The previous time in Adelaide on 2:42:06.320 --> 2:42:08.280 the Brothers and Arms tour, we played to fifty five 2:42:08.360 --> 2:42:12.400 thousand people in a stadium. On this tour, I had 2:42:12.440 --> 2:42:16.280 completely miscalculated. And I'm going to share the blame with 2:42:16.600 --> 2:42:21.160 the promoter, Gary because unfortunately he's passed on. But you know, 2:42:21.240 --> 2:42:24.760 we had broken all these records in Australia, so you 2:42:25.200 --> 2:42:28.320 have certain assumptions planted in your mind. Oh, we can 2:42:28.400 --> 2:42:33.560 do this again. Set the thing up. I arrive in 2:42:33.600 --> 2:42:36.160 Australia a few days after the guys because they've gone 2:42:36.160 --> 2:42:40.520 there to rehearse with the local equipment, and that Gary 2:42:40.560 --> 2:42:43.520 picks me up at the airport and I'm getting ticket 2:42:43.560 --> 2:42:47.560 counts all the time, and I noticed that these ticket 2:42:47.600 --> 2:42:52.920 counts are not It's like it's like a movie, you know, 2:42:53.080 --> 2:42:56.000 in the movie world. They know on the first night 2:42:57.800 --> 2:43:02.480 and I'm looking at this figure for Adelaide and it's like, 2:43:03.320 --> 2:43:05.640 we sold fifty five thousand tickets last time, and we've 2:43:05.640 --> 2:43:09.720 sold six thousand tickets this time. Holy, So we move 2:43:09.760 --> 2:43:12.920 it into another venue and we sell eight thousand tickets, 2:43:12.920 --> 2:43:15.560 which fills the other venue. So that you could say 2:43:15.560 --> 2:43:17.760 that the fault was my fault because I put them 2:43:17.760 --> 2:43:21.400 in a venue that was too big. But in defense 2:43:21.440 --> 2:43:25.080 of myself, what would have happened if I'd put them 2:43:25.080 --> 2:43:27.800 in an eight thousand seater and fifty five thousand people 2:43:27.800 --> 2:43:31.800 had wanted to come? So you're in a no win. 2:43:32.600 --> 2:43:36.959 And I remember after that show, Mark and I were 2:43:36.959 --> 2:43:39.480 having a drink in this hotel and there were two 2:43:39.600 --> 2:43:43.640 ladies there from the record company, entirely professionally, I should add, 2:43:44.600 --> 2:43:50.360 and he suddenly said to me, he said, I made 2:43:50.360 --> 2:43:55.000 a crap record in front of the record company people. 2:43:56.400 --> 2:43:59.400 And I went, no, you didn't. I said, you didn't 2:43:59.400 --> 2:44:04.800 make a commercial record. There's a difference. And I'm thinking 2:44:04.840 --> 2:44:07.000 these two girls are going to go back and repeat. 2:44:07.040 --> 2:44:12.800 This conversation is going to go right round them, and 2:44:12.840 --> 2:44:14.400 he just kind of got up and went to bed. 2:44:15.160 --> 2:44:22.320 That comes with the territory, you know, if you there 2:44:22.600 --> 2:44:25.240 there are ants out there that have had a lifetime 2:44:25.280 --> 2:44:29.359 of god knows how many decades. The Stones Bruce Springsteen 2:44:32.680 --> 2:44:41.119 when they were going to Floyd, uh, and I sometimes 2:44:41.120 --> 2:44:43.560 look at them and I think, I mean, good for 2:44:43.760 --> 2:44:46.480 good for you. You've managed somehow, you've managed to keep 2:44:46.520 --> 2:44:50.840 the plates spinning. And the interesting thing to me about 2:44:50.840 --> 2:44:53.640 the Stones, for instances is that they don't make particularly 2:44:53.680 --> 2:44:56.640 good records. I mean, sometimes they come out with one 2:44:56.760 --> 2:45:02.280 that's better than the others, but they've turned the big 2:45:02.320 --> 2:45:07.640 outdoor stadium into an art form. Pink Floyd turned that 2:45:07.680 --> 2:45:12.000 into an art form. But then then then you've got 2:45:12.000 --> 2:45:19.520 these two characters, Roger and David, who just don't get. 2:45:19.360 --> 2:45:24.720 On, okay, putting a bow on it. How much longer 2:45:24.720 --> 2:45:27.200 do you work with Mark? And how does it end? 2:45:27.240 --> 2:45:27.720 With Mark? 2:45:28.640 --> 2:45:35.640 Right? Well, after the on Every Street thing on every 2:45:35.640 --> 2:45:42.560 Street to and record staggered literally like a very very 2:45:42.680 --> 2:45:46.520 very drunk man towards the gutter, and then he fell 2:45:46.560 --> 2:45:50.800 in it. It was quite clear at the end of 2:45:50.840 --> 2:45:54.520 that well, he actually was quite clear from almost the 2:45:54.560 --> 2:45:58.120 beginning of it that we were doing it for the 2:45:58.160 --> 2:46:06.640 wrong reason, and that written were all reasons, partly monetary, 2:46:08.320 --> 2:46:13.920 partly don't take the strong way. But things that I 2:46:14.400 --> 2:46:17.600 probably shouldn't tell you about, personal stuff, you know, that 2:46:17.920 --> 2:46:29.000 was going on, and the band just it wasn't even 2:46:29.120 --> 2:46:33.080 spoken about. That was what was so strange. Nobody sat around, 2:46:33.080 --> 2:46:37.160 nobody gave it six months and just said, you know 2:46:37.800 --> 2:46:40.280 what a war hand. How do we feel about this? 2:46:40.480 --> 2:46:44.560 Because because you've got a lot of very tight relationships 2:46:44.600 --> 2:46:46.680 that have gone on at that point for nearly twenty 2:46:47.240 --> 2:46:49.879 twenty plus years, and there are people who were just 2:46:49.959 --> 2:46:54.879 completely not speaking to each other and haven't to this day. 2:46:57.360 --> 2:47:02.720 And Mark decided, and he was propelled at least in 2:47:02.840 --> 2:47:15.160 part by the Nashville connection. If you like that he 2:47:15.360 --> 2:47:19.480 was going to he was obviously going to record the 2:47:19.520 --> 2:47:24.880 songs that he wrote and what he wanted I think, 2:47:25.920 --> 2:47:29.320 and this is me being an amateur psychiatrist, which I'm not. 2:47:32.160 --> 2:47:34.720 He wanted to get himself into a position where he 2:47:34.760 --> 2:47:41.440 was completely in control. He wasn't having to everybody who's 2:47:41.760 --> 2:47:45.280 played in the units he's had since, and they've really 2:47:45.320 --> 2:47:49.120 been pretty much the same people are. Essentially, you're a 2:47:49.840 --> 2:47:58.080 division Nashville studio players, and studio players by definition essentially 2:47:58.120 --> 2:48:05.080 play what they're told. I mean Richard Bennett, who plays 2:48:05.080 --> 2:48:07.920 guitar with him. Was with Neil Diamond for nineteen years 2:48:07.959 --> 2:48:13.920 playing I Am, I said, for nineteen years and Sweet 2:48:13.959 --> 2:48:19.640 Caroline and soon it's great stuff. But so he did 2:48:20.200 --> 2:48:23.520 the Golden Heart record, and I spent quite a bit 2:48:23.560 --> 2:48:28.760 of time out in Nashville, which, if you're not a player, 2:48:29.680 --> 2:48:35.080 is not a town which is incredibly stimulating to be in. 2:48:35.560 --> 2:48:45.200 And I'm not having a pop at Nashville. And as 2:48:45.240 --> 2:48:54.320 that record was taking form, I was starting to have doubts. 2:48:55.040 --> 2:48:58.120 It's a strange thing when you go into a situation 2:48:59.120 --> 2:49:06.039 with the belief and passion and love that I had 2:49:06.320 --> 2:49:11.080 for them from for the first ten years, from seventy 2:49:11.120 --> 2:49:20.120 eight to eighty eight, and suddenly find yourself just not 2:49:20.840 --> 2:49:27.600 liking it, not liking the music as much. And that's 2:49:27.680 --> 2:49:30.800 not to say I don't use terms like good and bad, 2:49:30.920 --> 2:49:35.279 because it's so personal the music I listened to personally, 2:49:36.120 --> 2:49:38.800 people would probably be quite surprised because I don't listen 2:49:38.840 --> 2:49:41.920 to rock and pop music except the stuff I grew up. 2:49:42.040 --> 2:49:45.400 I listened to a lot of film music. I'd listen 2:49:45.480 --> 2:49:50.320 to a huge amount of jazz, especially from the sixties 2:49:50.320 --> 2:49:54.800 and seventies, and not fusion stuff, but anyway, and that's 2:49:54.800 --> 2:50:00.840 by the bye, and he did that record, and there 2:50:00.879 --> 2:50:03.280 was I was a bit on. I think the impact, 2:50:03.320 --> 2:50:05.640 one of the impacts of the on every street experience 2:50:05.760 --> 2:50:08.520 was it had made me very unshure. That had a 2:50:08.520 --> 2:50:12.640 big impact on all of us mentally and physically, not 2:50:12.800 --> 2:50:16.800 in a good way. And I suddenly had lost my 2:50:17.000 --> 2:50:22.480 confidence in my own ability to pitch the thing at 2:50:22.520 --> 2:50:26.960 the right level. So when it came to live work, 2:50:27.040 --> 2:50:32.880 those Nashville players are not cheap, or you could say 2:50:32.920 --> 2:50:39.440 they're very cheap, because they they definitely it's how they 2:50:39.480 --> 2:50:41.560 make their living. I don't have a problem with that. 2:50:42.560 --> 2:50:48.480 And we had a very expensive band, and we had 2:50:48.600 --> 2:50:53.720 quite a big production, and I didn't feel confident enough 2:50:53.760 --> 2:51:03.760 to play big places. So it was break even time, really. 2:51:05.520 --> 2:51:12.800 And the other problem is that he, by which I 2:51:12.879 --> 2:51:17.280 mean Mark, he did not have the profile. This might 2:51:17.360 --> 2:51:19.800 sound strange, but you've got to pitch this back to 2:51:21.280 --> 2:51:25.960 that period of time two thousands. He wasn't. He didn't 2:51:25.959 --> 2:51:31.280 have the profile that Sting had within the police, or 2:51:31.840 --> 2:51:37.000 Eric had within Derek and the Dominoes, or he wasn't. 2:51:39.840 --> 2:51:43.400 He came in the office one morning and I happened 2:51:43.400 --> 2:51:46.119 to be downstairs talking to the girls, and he said 2:51:46.160 --> 2:51:49.760 something quite interesting. He said, because he'd obviously been watching 2:51:49.760 --> 2:51:52.560 Breakfast TV. And he said to me, don't you think 2:51:52.600 --> 2:51:58.240 it's strange that people like Elton and Rod go on 2:51:58.320 --> 2:52:02.000 TV and tell millions of strangers about the most intimate 2:52:02.080 --> 2:52:08.560 things in their lives. Like I said, well, that's their personalities. 2:52:10.040 --> 2:52:13.680 And I don't know whether you've read Elton's book. Elton's 2:52:13.680 --> 2:52:16.640 book is about as open a book as you could 2:52:17.320 --> 2:52:22.040 possibly find, and that's what Elton's personality is. And Rod 2:52:23.320 --> 2:52:26.560 is a no. I'm just using these two examples because 2:52:26.560 --> 2:52:30.600 he did. And Run Stewart knows the game backwards forwards 2:52:30.680 --> 2:52:34.879 upside down. I interviewed Narl Rogers a couple of years ago. 2:52:35.440 --> 2:52:38.560 It's brilliant because he knows what to do, he knows 2:52:38.600 --> 2:52:44.560 how to do it, and he's not people like that are. 2:52:46.640 --> 2:52:53.400 It's just they're happy to be stars. Mark's quite a 2:52:53.440 --> 2:53:02.480 private person. He's not particularly he doesn't enjoy he never 2:53:02.640 --> 2:53:08.520 enjoyed any of the ass the stuff that comes with 2:53:08.680 --> 2:53:18.080 being a rock star, whatever that is. And you asked 2:53:18.080 --> 2:53:19.800 what happened with me and him, Well, we did the 2:53:19.840 --> 2:53:22.640 Golden Heart thing, And I mean commercially that was quite 2:53:22.680 --> 2:53:26.320 successful and the tour did okay given the level that 2:53:26.360 --> 2:53:35.200 we were doing it at, and but the relationship, the 2:53:35.280 --> 2:53:41.120 relationship between us was shifting and we were both older. Obviously, 2:53:41.240 --> 2:53:45.120 it's very different when you're twenty six twenty seven and 2:53:45.200 --> 2:53:48.400 you meet somebody who's got a red fender and it 2:53:48.400 --> 2:53:52.200 makes you think that the shadows and by this time 2:53:53.800 --> 2:53:59.800 you're married or you're divorced, you've got children, you've got 2:54:00.040 --> 2:54:04.680 the responsibilities, and you think you think like a fifty 2:54:04.760 --> 2:54:07.240 year old person, not a twenty five year old person. 2:54:07.440 --> 2:54:09.640 And if you're not thinking like a fifty year old person, 2:54:09.920 --> 2:54:17.800 then something's wrong. And it was quite obvious as I 2:54:18.120 --> 2:54:21.879 as I was alluding to with the Australian thing. You know, 2:54:22.000 --> 2:54:26.680 the music scene is ever changing, there's new things coming along. 2:54:27.440 --> 2:54:31.679 Getting marked man offer on television was difficult. There's a 2:54:31.720 --> 2:54:35.400 line of people trying to get those slots and how 2:54:35.440 --> 2:54:38.920 many slots are there and in this country not many. 2:54:39.840 --> 2:54:42.360 And so he ended up he's the guy who took 2:54:42.360 --> 2:54:45.080 over from me, had him on programs with a guy 2:54:45.160 --> 2:54:49.360 who was basically a market gardener. Yeah, I mean kind 2:54:49.400 --> 2:54:52.960 of you end up. It's almost a sense of desperation 2:54:53.120 --> 2:54:58.560 sets in and everybody's coming along and the whole it's 2:54:58.600 --> 2:55:01.959 just even saying, really, the whole music industry changed. It 2:55:02.040 --> 2:55:04.480 became in the eighties and we were in the We 2:55:04.520 --> 2:55:08.960 were in the change. It went from being pretty chaotic 2:55:09.959 --> 2:55:19.640 to being corporate, and it's corporate now. So the last 2:55:19.640 --> 2:55:22.680 interview I did for the ILMC was with j Marciano 2:55:23.000 --> 2:55:31.800 from AG Great Guy, Lovely Man, and I actually said 2:55:31.800 --> 2:55:34.080 to him, I said, does AG have a sense of humor? 2:55:35.000 --> 2:55:41.240 And he said yes. I just started laughing. He does 2:55:42.680 --> 2:55:45.000 the corporations have a sense of hum you know. I mean, 2:55:45.040 --> 2:55:47.560 I don't have any beef against this. What happened in 2:55:47.600 --> 2:55:50.279 the music interest to me, and particularly the live side, 2:55:50.440 --> 2:55:55.320 was totally inevitable. It was completely inevitable. 2:55:55.520 --> 2:55:58.280 Let's go back to Mark. Yes, sorry, did he say 2:55:58.320 --> 2:56:00.679 we're done or did you say we're done? 2:56:01.280 --> 2:56:03.920 Oh? It was one of the weirdest meetings I've ever 2:56:03.959 --> 2:56:10.640 had in my life. And after it, after it, I 2:56:10.680 --> 2:56:13.840 honestly didn't know what had happened. I didn't know if 2:56:13.840 --> 2:56:18.840 I'd been sacked or I'd quit. We had a conversation 2:56:20.480 --> 2:56:25.600 he had done the record that came out of selling 2:56:25.600 --> 2:56:31.320 to Philadelphia and we were talking about the promotion on it, 2:56:31.400 --> 2:56:36.600 and without giving away too many secrets, as it were, 2:56:39.600 --> 2:56:41.800 he had agreed to do a certain amount of promotion 2:56:42.440 --> 2:56:46.360 which I had then set up, which was principally our 2:56:46.400 --> 2:56:54.600 old favorites, video clip TVs gigs, but he didn't want 2:56:54.600 --> 2:56:56.680 to do more than four months touring, which was fun. 2:56:59.200 --> 2:57:02.440 And I had put in all the TVs that you 2:57:02.480 --> 2:57:05.600 can get for somebody like him, because you can't get 2:57:05.600 --> 2:57:10.560 somebody like that or anybody of that age onto Saturday 2:57:10.600 --> 2:57:15.600 morning kids television shows. So it was the lettermans or 2:57:15.879 --> 2:57:19.520 whether the post is now Stephen Colbert, whoever it is, 2:57:19.959 --> 2:57:26.160 it was the other here Michael Parkinson, the kind of 2:57:26.280 --> 2:57:31.760 chat show format with musical guest, and having got the 2:57:31.800 --> 2:57:39.680 whole lot together in a very kind of odd way, 2:57:40.400 --> 2:57:43.080 he decided he didn't want to do any of them. 2:57:45.920 --> 2:57:48.960 And his reason was that he did not want to 2:57:48.959 --> 2:57:51.840 be as public a figure as that would make him. 2:57:53.760 --> 2:57:56.400 And I was not best pleased because I'd spent quite 2:57:56.440 --> 2:57:58.640 a long time doing this and it wasn't a particularly 2:57:58.640 --> 2:58:03.560 easy thing to do, and I didn't want the record 2:58:03.560 --> 2:58:07.920 companies and someone to be demotivated, because when you go 2:58:08.000 --> 2:58:12.560 to Belgium to do, Telly, you end up doing a 2:58:12.560 --> 2:58:16.480 pile of interviews, so you have print going on, or 2:58:16.760 --> 2:58:21.080 whatever the technology is of the time. And we had 2:58:21.320 --> 2:58:27.960 and his pa rang me up and told me, and 2:58:28.000 --> 2:58:30.160 I had him come into the office one evening, just 2:58:30.200 --> 2:58:35.720 me and him, and we had a very surreal conversation 2:58:37.600 --> 2:58:44.320 which ended with him, well, it ended with I don't 2:58:44.360 --> 2:58:47.640 know how honestly, if I could explain it to you, 2:58:47.720 --> 2:58:50.760 I would. I don't really know what happened. It was 2:58:50.800 --> 2:58:55.800 a bit like Bill's comment about Robert Plant. I just 2:58:55.920 --> 2:58:59.959 thought that he said something to me which was so upset. 2:59:01.360 --> 2:59:05.640 I just thought, I can't do this anymore. And you 2:59:05.760 --> 2:59:07.840 have to put that in the context. And I would 2:59:07.840 --> 2:59:10.920 say that of Bill, and Bill would absolutely agree with me. 2:59:11.760 --> 2:59:14.640 It's a lot easier to be able to say that 2:59:14.640 --> 2:59:21.640 when you can, you know, and sometimes in life it's 2:59:21.760 --> 2:59:25.120 like marriages and all that. Everybody uses that example, and 2:59:25.160 --> 2:59:30.760 actually managing acts is not like being married. But things 2:59:30.879 --> 2:59:34.039 just have run their course, and it had run its course, 2:59:34.240 --> 2:59:36.440 and it had probably run it. We were probably quite 2:59:36.480 --> 2:59:39.280 a bit by our cell by day, and I said 2:59:39.320 --> 2:59:42.720 to him, I mentioned somebody else who happened to be 2:59:42.720 --> 2:59:44.800 in the building at the time. For you know, who 2:59:44.920 --> 2:59:47.879 was working on the promo tool that we I thought 2:59:47.879 --> 2:59:51.560 we were going to do. And I said, if you 2:59:51.600 --> 2:59:53.879 pay him a salary, he knows how to get you 2:59:53.920 --> 2:59:55.720 from A to B and do you think he's funny? 2:59:57.080 --> 3:00:04.480 So that's what happened. And then the irony was that 3:00:04.520 --> 3:00:07.360 he went off and he did seventy television shows Europe 3:00:07.400 --> 3:00:11.439 in the UK on that record. I have don't understand 3:00:12.360 --> 3:00:16.400 and our relationship now he lives literally one hundred and 3:00:16.440 --> 3:00:19.800 fifty yards from where I'm speaking to you from this apartment, 3:00:20.400 --> 3:00:25.599 and I don't see him. We have the occasional interaction 3:00:25.879 --> 3:00:30.200 which is usually something to do with which happened when 3:00:30.200 --> 3:00:32.760 we were together. I mean, when he went on tour 3:00:32.800 --> 3:00:38.520 with Bob Dylan, you know, a double bill thing. I 3:00:38.560 --> 3:00:42.119 got an email from him that in itself is amazing. 3:00:43.720 --> 3:00:46.960 There was a wonderful interview some years ago with Charlie 3:00:46.959 --> 3:00:52.160 Watson Ronnie Wood, and Ronnie was telling Charlie Charlie was 3:00:52.200 --> 3:00:57.320 a wonderful man, fantastic guy. He mentioned that Keith Richards 3:00:57.320 --> 3:01:00.720 had sent an email and I thought Charli was going 3:01:00.760 --> 3:01:05.120 to have a comera, but Mars would send me an 3:01:05.120 --> 3:01:07.200 email and he sent me this email, I can do 3:01:07.240 --> 3:01:11.240 it for baiting for you. It said, Well, he hasn't 3:01:11.280 --> 3:01:16.039 spoken to me, he hasn't spoken to my manager, he 3:01:16.080 --> 3:01:18.400 hasn't spoken to my band, and he hasn't spoken to 3:01:18.440 --> 3:01:21.800 any of my crew. He hasn't spoken to his band, 3:01:22.360 --> 3:01:26.840 and he hasn't spoken to his manager. Nothing changes, Boss. 3:01:26.840 --> 3:01:29.400 The love mark didn't even tell me who it was 3:01:29.440 --> 3:01:30.760 and it was straight away. 3:01:32.760 --> 3:01:35.320 Okay, it's the it's. 3:01:35.120 --> 3:01:37.160 The sorry just to I know we're going to be 3:01:37.200 --> 3:01:42.959 finishing up the It's the characters for the generation that 3:01:43.040 --> 3:01:48.119 I belong to that has made it interesting. The people 3:01:48.160 --> 3:01:54.680 who've got a sense of humor about themselves. Somebody who 3:01:54.800 --> 3:01:58.720 was like that, who people would never imagine she was 3:01:58.800 --> 3:02:04.560 like that, was Tina Toern. Tina was so funny. She 3:02:05.600 --> 3:02:08.320 was such a gossip. Who's going out with so and so, 3:02:08.840 --> 3:02:14.599 Who's was who's having sex with? Brilliant? Brilliant? 3:02:15.360 --> 3:02:19.920 Okay, Dire Streets was very successful. We went through your 3:02:20.040 --> 3:02:32.080 various percentages. What did you do with all the money? 3:02:27.200 --> 3:02:35.959 Yeah, being from the North of England and having a 3:02:36.000 --> 3:02:40.040 father who was the principal of a large grammar school, 3:02:40.800 --> 3:02:59.480 I was careful put it into property pension funds because 3:02:59.480 --> 3:03:01.920 we get a very good tax break thing in this 3:03:02.040 --> 3:03:11.280 country on pension funds, had a great life. I'm in 3:03:11.360 --> 3:03:14.160 traveled a lot because when you're traveling with bands, you're 3:03:14.200 --> 3:03:17.280 not traveling. You're in a just You're in this just box. 3:03:23.400 --> 3:03:27.720 I don't say this, should I say this? I helped 3:03:27.720 --> 3:03:32.360 a few people. I think there's a kind of when 3:03:32.440 --> 3:03:48.120 you have such a when you have such a when 3:03:48.160 --> 3:03:52.560 you live your dream, when you get to live your dream. 3:03:56.360 --> 3:04:03.680 I never stopped being surprised about the financial end. Ever, 3:04:03.240 --> 3:04:05.720 I could never get my head around it at all. 3:04:06.920 --> 3:04:13.160 So sometimes you help people out. You certainly, of course 3:04:13.360 --> 3:04:15.240 help your kids out if you can. My kids are 3:04:15.240 --> 3:04:20.680 grown now. I mean I've got grandchildren. My grandson's fifteen 3:04:20.720 --> 3:04:26.240 and my granddaughter's thirteen, and I'm very proud of my kids. 3:04:26.600 --> 3:04:31.720 My daughters are very high ranked lawyer at Meta for 3:04:31.800 --> 3:04:37.480 Better or Worse, driving her mad and my son teaches 3:04:37.520 --> 3:04:42.960 foreign students English on the web, and they're great. They're 3:04:43.000 --> 3:04:52.640 totally different. But I have I don't buy art or stuff, 3:04:52.680 --> 3:04:56.599 but I've got some nice antiques. But I'm not particularly 3:04:57.840 --> 3:05:00.120 I think you go through phases. I always say that 3:05:00.200 --> 3:05:02.720 people in the rock and roll game, they go through 3:05:02.760 --> 3:05:05.080 their art New vaux phase, and then they go through 3:05:05.120 --> 3:05:08.280 their Art Deco phase and then they come out at 3:05:08.320 --> 3:05:10.440 the other end and get a sofa that's comfortable to 3:05:10.480 --> 3:05:15.800 sit on. And it's always like that, and there's a 3:05:15.840 --> 3:05:23.199 real pressure in our society, of course, because it's capitalist consumers. 3:05:23.840 --> 3:05:25.840 I might have said this to you was before. It's 3:05:25.879 --> 3:05:28.080 a long time since I didn't pick up the check 3:05:28.080 --> 3:05:28.560 at dinner. 3:05:30.480 --> 3:05:34.760 But that's yes, let's just go one step further. You 3:05:34.800 --> 3:05:37.760 were the one and only manager of dire streets, which 3:05:37.800 --> 3:05:42.360 is not usually the case, and usually when they get 3:05:42.400 --> 3:05:46.000 a new manager there's an argument over the sunset clause 3:05:46.080 --> 3:05:50.320 and all this other stuff. In your particular case, are 3:05:50.360 --> 3:05:54.080 you still a royalty participant on the stuff you were 3:05:54.080 --> 3:05:54.680 involved with? 3:05:55.360 --> 3:05:58.119 No, but I chose not to be. I sold those rights. 3:05:58.560 --> 3:05:59.840 And how long agoing too? 3:06:00.000 --> 3:06:09.120 Oh, I told those about six years ago, seven years 3:06:09.120 --> 3:06:15.360 ago to a company called Royalty Exchange in Denver. I 3:06:15.360 --> 3:06:25.880 mean that that was partly to do with a divorce 3:06:26.000 --> 3:06:32.440 that was looming. It was partly to do with I 3:06:32.600 --> 3:06:36.240 just kind of got fed up running it all, and 3:06:36.320 --> 3:06:38.440 it was partly to do with the fact that there 3:06:38.560 --> 3:06:43.800 was a decline. Now I'm not saying that it's a 3:06:43.840 --> 3:06:46.640 massive decline. And I don't know because I don't get 3:06:46.640 --> 3:06:50.920 statements anymore, but I'm sure that the distracts catalogue that 3:06:51.640 --> 3:06:54.840 I need to qualify this. I had a sunset clause 3:06:55.000 --> 3:06:59.760 on publishing which had a cut off date. It was long, 3:07:00.080 --> 3:07:03.400 but the cutoff date had passed and the publishing was 3:07:03.440 --> 3:07:08.560 about sixty percent of the total. And the record side, 3:07:09.520 --> 3:07:14.519 especially after streaming came in and the entire artistic community 3:07:14.640 --> 3:07:21.160 got stuffed, that had declined. And quite soon, of course 3:07:21.200 --> 3:07:27.520 there will be an Ai Nofler a little be even less. 3:07:28.200 --> 3:07:35.720 But I just then there were personal reasons, psychological reasons sometimes, 3:07:36.040 --> 3:07:38.920 you know, if you've had some of the stuff that 3:07:38.959 --> 3:07:42.480 went down at the end was pretty awful. And I'm 3:07:42.480 --> 3:07:44.480 not saying I'm not saying I'm blameless. 3:07:44.480 --> 3:07:46.680 Don't you talk about the end of the band or 3:07:47.040 --> 3:07:49.280 just before you solved your royalty interest? 3:07:49.640 --> 3:07:53.200 No, the end of the relationship with that side of 3:07:53.240 --> 3:07:56.440 the relationship with Mark. I mean, he and I perfectly 3:07:56.480 --> 3:07:59.520 polite with each other. I don't listen to his music, 3:08:00.120 --> 3:08:05.760 don't have I don't feel any connection with it. I mean, 3:08:05.800 --> 3:08:10.960 I don't know whether you know Bill curvisly sits around 3:08:11.080 --> 3:08:16.720 listening to Judas Priest albums when he goes home. Probably not. 3:08:17.080 --> 3:08:21.200 I don't know. Yeah, I think you. I learned a 3:08:21.240 --> 3:08:27.760 lot from Peter Grant. Now, Peter Grant is if you 3:08:27.800 --> 3:08:31.560 mentioned Peter Grant's name and people and people who remember him, 3:08:31.600 --> 3:08:37.560 and people do remember him, tell you a funny little 3:08:37.600 --> 3:08:43.240 story because it came up last night. Full enough. Back 3:08:43.280 --> 3:08:51.920 in the late sixties, Peter shared an office on Oxford 3:08:51.959 --> 3:08:57.199 Street in London with Mickey most famed South African record 3:08:57.200 --> 3:09:05.480 producer Nicky Chin the songwriter I was mentioning had got 3:09:05.879 --> 3:09:09.240 had met a waiter at a club called Annabel's whose 3:09:09.320 --> 3:09:13.920 name was Mike Chapman, who was serving him drinks. I 3:09:13.959 --> 3:09:20.480 love stuff like this, So somebody's told Mike. The disc 3:09:20.520 --> 3:09:24.320 jockeys told Mike that Nicky is a songwriter lyricist, and 3:09:24.360 --> 3:09:28.039 Mike's thick considers himself to be a melody writer. So 3:09:28.120 --> 3:09:31.040 Mike's sister NICKI, I write songs, and Nicky says I 3:09:31.120 --> 3:09:34.000 write songs, and that neither of them has written Diddley's Squit. 3:09:34.640 --> 3:09:39.840 But they get together. Nicky finds out the name and 3:09:39.959 --> 3:09:44.480 phone of the phone number of Mickey most Pa, so 3:09:44.520 --> 3:09:47.039 he rings her up and he asks her out on 3:09:47.080 --> 3:09:50.400 a blind date and she goes and on the day 3:09:50.600 --> 3:09:56.240 he inveigels Mickey's home phone number out of her. This 3:09:56.320 --> 3:09:58.520 is this is our this is when it was fun. 3:09:59.240 --> 3:10:01.800 So he goes how it's the middle of bloody night, 3:10:02.400 --> 3:10:06.240 and he calls the number, and this very gruff voice 3:10:06.280 --> 3:10:09.640 because he's just been woken up, says she's Mickey most 3:10:09.640 --> 3:10:14.240 who's that? And Nicky comes on and Nicky says, this 3:10:14.320 --> 3:10:18.280 is Nicky Chin. I'm a songwriter with Mike Chapman. We 3:10:18.440 --> 3:10:23.760 write hits. They haven't written a song. Sorry, they have 3:10:23.879 --> 3:10:28.959 written some songs, they've not had anything like it. And 3:10:29.040 --> 3:10:31.680 Micky mos did something which is probably what I would 3:10:31.680 --> 3:10:35.400 have done. Micky said to them, all right, my office 3:10:35.560 --> 3:10:39.440 eleven o'clock tomorrow morning, now fuck off. Puts the phone down. 3:10:39.959 --> 3:10:45.000 So they turn up and it turns out that NICKI 3:10:45.320 --> 3:10:49.800 that Mickey is sharing an office with Peter Grant and 3:10:49.840 --> 3:10:54.160 it's about twelve feet wide by sixteen foot long, and 3:10:54.200 --> 3:10:57.680 there are two desks and Peter, at the time weighed 3:10:57.720 --> 3:11:01.640 over three hundred pounds and Mickey's like this little bloke. 3:11:01.720 --> 3:11:05.240 And it's a famous address in London called one five 3:11:05.280 --> 3:11:08.879 to five Oxford Street because below them were Chris Wright 3:11:08.920 --> 3:11:14.760 and Terry Allis being Chrysalis, and below then were the 3:11:14.800 --> 3:11:22.560 Chrystalies agency booking out. So they go in and they 3:11:22.600 --> 3:11:26.760 give and they got some demos cut on forty five's 3:11:28.000 --> 3:11:31.640 No Sorry tape, Big Bum cassette tape. Ingo's the tape. 3:11:31.640 --> 3:11:34.600 Mickey plays the first song, stops it after ten seconds 3:11:34.720 --> 3:11:41.359 it's rubbish, rolls it on next one fifteen seconds, rubbish, 3:11:42.080 --> 3:11:49.160 Rubbish plays six songs, rubbish and he went, nah, nothing, nothing, 3:11:49.240 --> 3:11:51.000 there nothing. They can't do anything with any of that. 3:11:52.200 --> 3:11:55.080 And he says, you got anything else, and Nicky says, well, 3:11:55.080 --> 3:12:00.280 we've got one other song and it was cool old 3:12:03.760 --> 3:12:07.040 believe it or not. It was called Tom Tom turn around. 3:12:07.840 --> 3:12:11.640 Puts it in, listens to the whole thing. He says, 3:12:11.920 --> 3:12:14.600 which one of you two twats called me last night? 3:12:15.120 --> 3:12:18.120 And Nicki goes, that was me and he says, you 3:12:18.200 --> 3:12:20.080 said you're the one who said you can write hits, 3:12:20.080 --> 3:12:22.840 and Nicky goes, yeah. He says, you're right, you can. 3:12:23.040 --> 3:12:25.959 That's a hit. I'll take it, and it's a big hit. 3:12:25.959 --> 3:12:30.039 It's the number one for sweet groups when they go out. 3:12:33.080 --> 3:12:38.120 Nicky told Nicki this many years later, Peter says, I 3:12:38.160 --> 3:12:40.800 don't think you're going to get anywhere with those two. 3:12:41.560 --> 3:12:45.680 They're fucking newslet. And of course they had hit after 3:12:45.800 --> 3:12:50.160 hit after hit after it after it. What I learned 3:12:50.160 --> 3:12:58.600 from Peter was that the fuggy image was Peter was 3:12:58.600 --> 3:13:03.400 a shy man or not. He was quite private. He 3:13:03.440 --> 3:13:06.160 was quite shy, and it was all a bit of 3:13:06.200 --> 3:13:10.320 an act, helped by the fact that before he got 3:13:10.320 --> 3:13:12.840 into music he had been an amateur. He'd been a 3:13:12.879 --> 3:13:20.199 professional wrestler. His wrestling name was Count Bruno Alisi of Milan, Italy, 3:13:20.760 --> 3:13:26.080 which in itself is hilarious. And when I got to 3:13:26.160 --> 3:13:30.720 know Peter, and he had stopped the drugs by then, 3:13:31.720 --> 3:13:36.680 I must and he wouldn't mind me saying that. I mean, 3:13:36.760 --> 3:13:40.080 his his desk was like the last scene of Scarface 3:13:40.320 --> 3:13:49.480 most of the time, and he was his persona. He'd 3:13:49.480 --> 3:13:53.880 become a country gentleman. He used to wear suits with ties. 3:13:55.040 --> 3:13:58.240 And he lost. He lost. He said to me once, 3:13:58.280 --> 3:14:03.160 he said, ed I've lost a person in weight, And 3:14:03.440 --> 3:14:05.640 ARMED said to me once, he said, when I saw 3:14:05.760 --> 3:14:10.879 Peter Grant, I didn't recognize him, And he said, and 3:14:11.000 --> 3:14:14.480 the whole way you've spoken everything, and what Peter had 3:14:14.480 --> 3:14:22.000 done was he had decided. People constantly asking him to 3:14:22.040 --> 3:14:24.160 get back into the business, and would you manage this, 3:14:24.440 --> 3:14:29.560 and Queen Queen he turned Queen down. He understood. He 3:14:29.600 --> 3:14:33.920 said to me, when you have an experience like the 3:14:33.959 --> 3:14:36.959 one I had with led Zeppelin and the one you've 3:14:37.000 --> 3:14:40.760 had with Diastreit, there is no point trying to repeat it. 3:14:42.000 --> 3:14:47.480 And I completely agreed with that. There's no point going 3:14:47.680 --> 3:14:51.600 back and trying to recreate something that you did when 3:14:51.640 --> 3:14:56.000 you were thirty two and your I'm seventy five now. 3:14:58.080 --> 3:15:00.480 So what I do now, Bob, is I go music 3:15:00.560 --> 3:15:06.199 conferences like CMW in Toronto, and I ring up Don 3:15:06.320 --> 3:15:09.960 Passman and came to come and who else? Bill Silver 3:15:11.520 --> 3:15:12.360 and it'll be fun. 3:15:12.920 --> 3:15:15.680 Well, certainly two good friends of mine. I will see 3:15:15.680 --> 3:15:20.320 you in Toronto soon. There's a whole other area that 3:15:20.360 --> 3:15:23.120 we never even touched. Will do down the line, but 3:15:23.240 --> 3:15:26.880 I think we got most of the dire stray. 3:15:26.760 --> 3:15:28.560 Give me a hint on the other area. 3:15:28.800 --> 3:15:32.320 I'm just well, I would like to know more about 3:15:32.400 --> 3:15:35.879 Jerry Rafferty, who I'm a bit saying of. I would 3:15:35.959 --> 3:15:39.840 also like to hear about your experience with Brian Ferry 3:15:39.920 --> 3:15:42.000 and your experiences with a Blue Nile. 3:15:42.920 --> 3:15:44.840 Yeah, Taylor Swift, your. 3:15:44.840 --> 3:15:49.680 Favorite right, and how you promoted shows in college and 3:15:49.720 --> 3:15:50.800 how you became. 3:15:50.480 --> 3:15:55.400 An I will say, just to sign off, that's there's 3:15:55.400 --> 3:15:59.680 some great topics and stories there about everybody you just mentioned, 3:16:00.120 --> 3:16:07.320 because they all the other artists I work with. Jerry 3:16:07.440 --> 3:16:11.440 was difficult, but I loved Scott Walker, who you didn't 3:16:11.480 --> 3:16:15.760 mention just there. I thought Jerry had a prodigious talent 3:16:15.920 --> 3:16:18.520 which got wasted because of alcohol. I'm not going I 3:16:18.560 --> 3:16:26.280 won't do the thing now. And Brian. Brian's a one off, 3:16:26.920 --> 3:16:33.280 but I'm on good terms with everybody. I've represented most 3:16:33.320 --> 3:16:37.800 of them. It's the situation with Mark is just strange, 3:16:37.920 --> 3:16:41.720 and it's just you get to the point where you 3:16:41.920 --> 3:16:44.560 just accept the way things are. There's no point pushing 3:16:44.600 --> 3:16:48.280 against it. I've really enjoyed this. This has been great. 3:16:49.080 --> 3:16:51.400 I must say that you. I'm going to flatter you. 3:16:52.320 --> 3:16:56.440 I've been interviewed many times by many people. You're in 3:16:56.440 --> 3:17:00.080 a class of your own. Definitely, you've really know what 3:17:00.160 --> 3:17:04.320 happened makes makes somebody sweat. 3:17:07.040 --> 3:17:11.280 Well, on that note, and I'll see you in Toronto. 3:17:10.959 --> 3:17:13.000 You will. I wish you well, Bob. 3:17:13.080 --> 3:17:16.600 I wish you well. Until next time. This is Bob 3:17:16.760 --> 3:17:17.400 Left SAIDs