Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is Uber Manager. In his tenure, he's looked
Speaker 1: after the Stones, The Who, Leonard skinnerd James Peter. Good
Speaker 1: to have you here. Nice to be here, Bob. Finally,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for inviting me. And where exactly
Speaker 1: are you right this very second? Right now, I am
Speaker 1: in what is presently called Rhode Island and the plantations,
Speaker 1: but it's about to be just called Rhode Island, I understand. Um.
Speaker 1: I kind of moved to America in the early seventies
Speaker 1: and got my green card way back in seventy three,
Speaker 1: and subsequently married a young lady from a from American
Speaker 1: lady who resided in Rhode Island, and we bought a
Speaker 1: house up here about thirty years ago in a wonderful
Speaker 1: part of the country, very very pretty. Now we've had
Speaker 1: previous conversations. You've spent time in Australia. Was that just
Speaker 1: when we were emailing or you all? I think that's
Speaker 1: when we were emailing, Barba. I mean, I'm I'm born
Speaker 1: in Britain, in the Midlands, Wolverhampton, where Slade came from.
Speaker 1: Um and it's rather like the equipment of say Akron.
Speaker 1: It's where Goodyear tires are made in Britain. Um And
Speaker 1: I spent my early youth in Britain. And I first
Speaker 1: came to America when I was twenty three and got
Speaker 1: a green card shortly afterwards and have been an American
Speaker 1: resident ever since, although just by some strange quirk as
Speaker 1: life can present. UM, I've tended to be have most
Speaker 1: of my business has been centered in the UK, so
Speaker 1: I've kind of gone across the Atlantic backwards and forwards
Speaker 1: for many years. Let's go back to the Midlands. What
Speaker 1: did your parents do for a living? UM? My father
Speaker 1: was um a farmer. He was kind of um, you know,
Speaker 1: he couldn't hold a job, Bob. We moved around the
Speaker 1: country frequently every two or three years. And he was
Speaker 1: one of these guys who was brought in when farms
Speaker 1: were kind of struggling. He would be asked to come
Speaker 1: in there and try and get it in shape, you know,
Speaker 1: replant the fields and etcetera. Etcenter, bring cows in instead
Speaker 1: of sheep. But he he wasn't the easiest of guys. Um.
Speaker 1: And we moved a lot around the country. I would think,
Speaker 1: on an average every two or three years my mother,
Speaker 1: bless her. Um was a wonderful woman. She actually was
Speaker 1: a florist, was a gardener and of some repute, and
Speaker 1: was one of the first gardeners in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties to kind of look at Japanese flower arranging, which
Speaker 1: was kind of the cutting edge world of flour arrangement
Speaker 1: in those days, an event and did very well, exhibited
Speaker 1: all around the country, run flower shop, and actually was
Speaker 1: part of the team that did the flowers for Princess
Speaker 1: Margaret's wedding in Westminster Abbey. So I had a tough
Speaker 1: act to follow. That's certainly a flower in her cap.
Speaker 1: Was he more of a businessman or did he get
Speaker 1: his hands dirty? No, he got his hands dirty. He
Speaker 1: wasn't a businessman at all. Um. He we didn't have
Speaker 1: a good relationship, Bob. I mean, I'm one of those
Speaker 1: guys and I think there's a lot in the music
Speaker 1: business and there's must be a story there who didn't
Speaker 1: have a particularly happy childhood because of him. I as
Speaker 1: a result of not really getting on with him, I
Speaker 1: went to I was put into this kind of boarding
Speaker 1: school when I was about thirteen, and frankly after that
Speaker 1: I went to university and after that I went down
Speaker 1: to London and I never really lived at home after
Speaker 1: I was thirteen. Um, we didn't have a good relationship
Speaker 1: my father and I. Okay, so how many kids were
Speaker 1: in the family. There are three of us. There's myself
Speaker 1: the oldest, there's my sister who's two years younger than me,
Speaker 1: and then my brother who is fifteen years younger than me.
Speaker 1: Came very late when my mother was forty nine. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think, um, yeah, and that my brother that lives
Speaker 1: in Britain in in the UK, as does my sister,
Speaker 1: up in a place called Ilkley, Yorkshire, very very nice
Speaker 1: and my parents funny enough, my father passed away a
Speaker 1: number of years ago at ninety six, and my mother
Speaker 1: passed away only two years ago at a hundred and two.
Speaker 1: So um, hopefully I've got good g right. If the
Speaker 1: COVID doesn't get you, you're gonna be well. Certainly we're
Speaker 1: in a bubble here, and you know, Rhode Island has
Speaker 1: got just about the least kind of cases in the
Speaker 1: country right now. Of course it's the smallest state, but
Speaker 1: they she's done a remarkably good job, the governor here, um,
Speaker 1: and people seemed to be being sensible as opposed to
Speaker 1: much of the rest of the country right now. So
Speaker 1: growing up traditionally the oldest child or the hopes and
Speaker 1: dreams of the family or in that child, did you
Speaker 1: feel that or were you so estranged from your father
Speaker 1: that wasn't a factor. More of the latter. My father,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm trying not to be cruel, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't very successful ending he did did. Uh. He treated
Speaker 1: my mother terribly. He treated me terribly. Um, he couldn't
Speaker 1: hold a job down. He wasn't an educated man. He
Speaker 1: came from a very very interesting family. I'm from a
Speaker 1: very interesting family. I think my great great great grandfather
Speaker 1: started Rudge Bicycles, which was quite an esteemed bicycle brand
Speaker 1: in um in Britain and has traveled the world. And
Speaker 1: you know, it was bought by Rally then brought by
Speaker 1: bs A. But my great great grandfather drunk it all
Speaker 1: away and so we had The family fell in very
Speaker 1: tough times. My father, according to many people, and was
Speaker 1: very quite jealous of me. I was, you know, fortunate,
Speaker 1: and I was good at sport. UM, I was relatively bright. UM,
Speaker 1: I did very well at school at Rugby. UM I
Speaker 1: kind of got an England trial, and funny enough, the
Speaker 1: day I got the England Under sixteen trial, Um, it
Speaker 1: was in Leicester, which is not far from Wolverhampton from
Speaker 1: where and where I went to school in Ludlow, the
Speaker 1: boarding school, and my father didn't want to go, but
Speaker 1: my mother insisted and my mother went to went to
Speaker 1: see the game to watch me and my father sat
Speaker 1: in the car in the parking lot. So oh god. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that has been someone of a motivating for me
Speaker 1: throughout my life. Um. You know, one of the funny
Speaker 1: things on the iron is of it was that I
Speaker 1: didn't learn to drive till I was fifty in fact
Speaker 1: when I came up here, because you know, I was
Speaker 1: born into the music business. I was still a kid
Speaker 1: when I was started with the who I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything but Limos, I mean Limo around London or Limit
Speaker 1: around New York. I mean what else was it a
Speaker 1: better Limos? And I never learned to drive. And so
Speaker 1: at fifty, on my mother's birthday, I passed my test.
Speaker 1: So he didn't learn to drive until you were fifty
Speaker 1: fifty because um, that was one the one thing my
Speaker 1: father told me and my mother that he could do
Speaker 1: that I couldn't do. So I thought, well, instead of
Speaker 1: like learning to I won't drive. I'll prove to him
Speaker 1: that I can exist quite well and be hopefully relatively
Speaker 1: successful without driving. So I didn't drive until we moved
Speaker 1: up to what is essentially the country. Um. One of
Speaker 1: those odd circumstances in life. So he obviously played quite
Speaker 1: a factor in my life. My mother I do with Bob.
Speaker 1: She was a wonderfully creative, very talented. To the day
Speaker 1: she died, she asked me when I was going to
Speaker 1: get a proper job. She could never understand because when
Speaker 1: I got in the business, it wasn't a job, It
Speaker 1: wasn't an industry. It was well like a cottage industry
Speaker 1: of anything. And you know, we went along, we were
Speaker 1: kind of making up the rules. Um as we went along.
Speaker 1: You came of age, uh in the pre Beatle era,
Speaker 1: shall we say, the Beatles really kind of hitting sixty
Speaker 1: two in England, sixty four in America. Were you a
Speaker 1: music fan? I was. I was at this boarding school
Speaker 1: and I was huge Rolling Stones fan, right and my
Speaker 1: best friend was a huge Beatles fan. But I wasn't
Speaker 1: a massive you know, I don't think there were music
Speaker 1: fans quite like there are now who were actually like,
Speaker 1: are so knowledgeable. So also was an incredible elects I
Speaker 1: never came across it was. It was it was slightly
Speaker 1: a different dynamic, so Peter music for and we're not
Speaker 1: to seem not as knowledgeable in your era as they
Speaker 1: are now. You were saying, yeah, I think so. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because music as we know it, Bob didn't exist, certainly,
Speaker 1: not in the critical mass that it does now. It
Speaker 1: was very early, it was, it was just beginning to evolve.
Speaker 1: I mean, the first record I bought was a seven
Speaker 1: inch single was by Del Shannon right run Around right
Speaker 1: then I think it was le Roy Van Dyet walk
Speaker 1: on By. And then I discovered Bill Haley and Rock
Speaker 1: around the Clock and that was the fifth is and
Speaker 1: you know, and we were at down and then the
Speaker 1: Beatles and the Stones and the so called English invasion
Speaker 1: kind of begun and started to kind of travel the
Speaker 1: world the west, the West coast. I think American sound
Speaker 1: kind of started. The birds and people, Buffalo, Springfield. That
Speaker 1: was a little later. Dylan was there or there, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't like on the level to any extent by
Speaker 1: any comparison to now. So I and for me anyway,
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of that intensity of feeling of kids
Speaker 1: of young age during at that time it was in
Speaker 1: some respects it was more than ever it has been
Speaker 1: ever since, and which it sadly isn't now the soundtrack
Speaker 1: to a cultural movement, um a youth movement which I
Speaker 1: think culminated at Woodstock. That was kind of when the
Speaker 1: major which was a music a musical, sociological and political
Speaker 1: statement that transcended pure music. But in those preceding ten years,
Speaker 1: it was a much smaller world. I feel that from
Speaker 1: what I recall now. Okay, so you were in boarding school.
Speaker 1: You're obviously a uh an athlete in many different venues,
Speaker 1: and you were a good athlete. Were you the kind
Speaker 1: of kid who got along with everybody and a lot
Speaker 1: of friends who you're of a loner or what kind
Speaker 1: of kid were you? No? I think I did. I
Speaker 1: think I got along with everybody. I mean I I
Speaker 1: was head boy at school, captain of rugby, captain of cricket,
Speaker 1: a kind of things. I was an athlete, which put
Speaker 1: me in good stead. And I believe that the one
Speaker 1: of the primary reasons that I got into Cambridge was
Speaker 1: because I was a good athlete. And one of the
Speaker 1: reason that I got into the music business was because
Speaker 1: when at Cambridge after my first year, I blew my
Speaker 1: knee out. Um, so, you know, I was pretty social then.
Speaker 1: I think as I've got older, I've got less social.
Speaker 1: I think that's part of getting older. I've noticing that myself.
Speaker 1: I think you're right, Bob, I think you have less
Speaker 1: patience and less everything and if everything's ground dog day,
Speaker 1: you've seen everything, so you've become kind of a little
Speaker 1: bit more cynical and less forgiving. But no, I was.
Speaker 1: I was pretty social back in the day. I have
Speaker 1: to say I felt I was. I mean I always say,
Speaker 1: you know, guitarists have a guitar, singers have a microphone,
Speaker 1: managed just have a mouth. So well, that's why I
Speaker 1: was asking people think just people think that, you know,
Speaker 1: the skill is just knowing a lot about music or
Speaker 1: being able to plot a course. We're getting along with
Speaker 1: people is the first criterion. But how devastating was it
Speaker 1: for you that you blew out your knee? It was
Speaker 1: a crushing I mean, really was. I mean, I love rugby.
Speaker 1: It was you know, rugby and music. I was there
Speaker 1: and but I was passionate about rugby, and it left
Speaker 1: a massive void in my life obviously. And although I
Speaker 1: was a music aficionado, a fan, and I bought music
Speaker 1: and followed it under the bed sheets like so many
Speaker 1: people in Britain with Radio Luxembourg and everything else after
Speaker 1: lights out, you know, the then back in, you know,
Speaker 1: all those things that kids did in those days to
Speaker 1: get the kind of music, and all the imports shows
Speaker 1: of the American bands. I mean, I still had that,
Speaker 1: but it left a huge hole in my life because
Speaker 1: I'm kind of probably already gathered pretty hyper um and
Speaker 1: and you know, I need things to do, I need
Speaker 1: things to occupy myself. So what we did, my friend
Speaker 1: and I we said, okay, we looked around at Cambridge
Speaker 1: and it's a number of independent colleges, almost like like
Speaker 1: the States. Here it's it's a federal system, it's and
Speaker 1: all the colleges were independent of one another and had
Speaker 1: no um coordinated entertainment budgets. All the colleges booked all
Speaker 1: their things separately individually. There was no kind of social
Speaker 1: secretary or no entertainment's board or whatever they have, And
Speaker 1: so we thought, there's a good chance it's a bit
Speaker 1: of a good business here, and so we formed an
Speaker 1: agency corp Mono because by that time the English folk
Speaker 1: scene was becoming really kind of cool and the incredible
Speaker 1: string band and bands of that nature. We started to
Speaker 1: kind of like come, you know. We started to follow
Speaker 1: and we started to book them around the other universities. Um,
Speaker 1: the Pink Floyd we from Cambridge. I got friendly with Gilmore.
Speaker 1: Gilmour was in a band called the Wall Flowers. He
Speaker 1: wasn't even the guitarist, he was the bass player and
Speaker 1: they played in our local public cry. So we started
Speaker 1: to get the field for booking stuff. We also managed
Speaker 1: the band. We put a band together. My first band
Speaker 1: was called the Pineapple Truck and we tagged it UM
Speaker 1: even though and back then you needed a tagline the
Speaker 1: band with the highest I que in the world. And
Speaker 1: we managed to get um interest. We got a story planted.
Speaker 1: I god knows how you do it. You know, when
Speaker 1: you're young, you don't think, you just act um. And
Speaker 1: we we got a story plan and as a result
Speaker 1: we got this kind of a and r rushed to
Speaker 1: come up. They all came up to see this band,
Speaker 1: who are terrible. Um, but I I remember and it's
Speaker 1: a funny story. And it's quite separate from my relationship
Speaker 1: later with Mick Jadder, but one of the things we
Speaker 1: decided to the lead singer. We had a kid called
Speaker 1: Ricky Hopper. Best friend at school was a Chris Jagger,
Speaker 1: happened to be mixed young brother. We thought, let's get
Speaker 1: him in. Let's get him in. We got a Jagger,
Speaker 1: we got the i Q, we got everything, and we
Speaker 1: kind of spun this story. And and a well known
Speaker 1: he was a journalist then he came a playwright and
Speaker 1: an author of some repute. Michael Frayne was sent up
Speaker 1: by the Sunday Times to do this piece on on
Speaker 1: this band of Pineapple Truck, and you know, I just
Speaker 1: fell in love with it. I just thought, this is fantastic,
Speaker 1: you know, orchestrating these things, tweaking, um, this is fantastic,
Speaker 1: and you know, putting on concerts, and I just fell
Speaker 1: in love with the business. And I think inasmuch as
Speaker 1: the music, I fell in love with the business because
Speaker 1: it was you could there were no rules, there was
Speaker 1: no structure that it was like you had to follow
Speaker 1: your instincts and it was just for me, It just
Speaker 1: it was just hit a sweet spot and That was
Speaker 1: the beginnings of my love, my my, my, my, my,
Speaker 1: my involvement in music from the other side of the
Speaker 1: of the room, as it were, the management, the business sidemen.
Speaker 1: We promoted a lot of shows at the Cambridge Corner Exchange,
Speaker 1: and I mean I loved all the American bands, so
Speaker 1: we had it. We bought over It's a Beautiful Day.
Speaker 1: I'm Butterfly. We had their um who else, We had
Speaker 1: the Electric Prunes. We toured w all those old California
Speaker 1: bands as well as the as well as obviously the
Speaker 1: String Band. I remember we booked her Anosaurus Rex and
Speaker 1: I had them at the Cambridge Corner Exchange and actually
Speaker 1: sat there watching it. Mark Bowl and fell asleep on
Speaker 1: stage when he was singing. I mean, you know with
Speaker 1: me it was him and Mickey hook the two of
Speaker 1: them before Mark wentz you know, and I hooked up
Speaker 1: with Mark later attract records. Um but and that was it.
Speaker 1: And so what happened was I booked the Who or
Speaker 1: we booked the Who just for one second? Okay? Uh.
Speaker 1: Even though it's easy to tell the story, it's not
Speaker 1: so easy to do to start an agency in booking
Speaker 1: at different colleges. Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit or
Speaker 1: was it another member of the so called we. No,
Speaker 1: I think it was me, my my, my, my mate
Speaker 1: who did it with me? John Willis, um wonderful guy,
Speaker 1: was still friends. He went on to the head of
Speaker 1: Channel four. He's made documentaries, he's the head of Bathta,
Speaker 1: he was chairman of Bathta for a number of years.
Speaker 1: He was. I think I was probably more entrepreneur than him. Actually, Bob,
Speaker 1: I kind of like, yeah, I had that at that point.
Speaker 1: You have no fear, um, just no fear you just
Speaker 1: as a young person, you kind of don't you don't
Speaker 1: you don't think it through drilling down a little bit,
Speaker 1: was the money to book these towards your personal money
Speaker 1: or the school's money? Now our personal money? We actually,
Speaker 1: we both know being a culture promoter is a like
Speaker 1: to go broke. So how did how did you manage
Speaker 1: to stay in business? Well? Hold on, now, then when
Speaker 1: we booked these shows, remember hold on, no, I see
Speaker 1: what you're saying. When we booked shows for the may balls,
Speaker 1: which are the big kind of balls on graduation balls here,
Speaker 1: that was the college money. We took a percentage. Okay,
Speaker 1: when I promoted concerts at the Cambridge Town like Cambridge
Speaker 1: Call Exchange like the Prunes, or we we did family
Speaker 1: with Roger Chapman. That was our own money. We we
Speaker 1: just it was again back to your point, it was relationships.
Speaker 1: There was one agency in particular that would sell to us.
Speaker 1: Some agencies wouldn't sell to young college kits without you know,
Speaker 1: with bank accounts with no money in them. One agency
Speaker 1: that sold to us, who I cultivated with John Willis,
Speaker 1: was called the Brian Morrison Agency. I remember now one
Speaker 1: thirty two chairing cross Road. That agency represented, amongst others,
Speaker 1: the Pink Floyd, the Pretty Things and a number of
Speaker 1: other bands. There was the bookers there, one being Steve
Speaker 1: O'Rourke who went on to manage the Pink Floyd, another
Speaker 1: Tony Howard who went on to manage the Soft Machine,
Speaker 1: and um a guy called Brian Murray who managed actually
Speaker 1: Mungo Jerry. You'd probably know who they are. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you got it. Um. But they sold to us and
Speaker 1: they taught me some lessons very early on, some big lessons.
Speaker 1: I remember we booked a band called Jimmy James and
Speaker 1: the Bag of Bonds into Cambridge Corn Exchange. I remember
Speaker 1: we paid a hundred fifty thousand, hundred and fifty pounds
Speaker 1: was the fee we paid them. No back ends in
Speaker 1: those days. Um, And for some reason, I don't know
Speaker 1: whether we blagged it or what, we didn't pay the
Speaker 1: full amount of money to the agency ahead of the show.
Speaker 1: You know, as you know, normally you have to, especially
Speaker 1: if you're an unknown promoter. So we agree, need um
Speaker 1: to settle with the band's manager on the night. So
Speaker 1: we go in and I go and say, all right,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got your money already. Here's the hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty. And the guy said, when we're only getting
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five, I said, no, that here's the content.
Speaker 1: So I learned about buying and selling very early on.
Speaker 1: That That was Steve A raw Bless his heart, and
Speaker 1: he became Yeah, he became a lifelong friend until he
Speaker 1: sadly passed away. Um. Okay, just like okay, we're in
Speaker 1: like sixty seven, sixty eight. Uh, this was I was
Speaker 1: a camera from sixty five to sixty eight. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: A side question, because the Incredible String band was big
Speaker 1: at that time, fell completely off the radar. Is that
Speaker 1: a sound that could ever come back? Or it was
Speaker 1: just a moment in time. It was a little bit
Speaker 1: at a moment in time like Donovan and listen, it
Speaker 1: was a little kind of a little hippie you know.
Speaker 1: Um two great musicians, Mike Williams and Mike Heron, great musicians,
Speaker 1: and there were them. Was like the Fairbook Convention. We
Speaker 1: booked them as well. There are a number of those
Speaker 1: man's not quite like the Incredible String Band, but they
Speaker 1: kind of bridge the gap, I suppose in some ways Bob,
Speaker 1: between real real folk and things like the Fairpool Convention.
Speaker 1: Because that time you had Bertie and and John Renborne
Speaker 1: were really doing well. There was the folk thing. There
Speaker 1: was a girl called Julie Felix in Britain, obviously in
Speaker 1: America because I remember my record collection at Cambridge had
Speaker 1: things like Tim Buckley, had things like Tim Harden, had
Speaker 1: things like um, oh God, Jesse Winchester. I remember that
Speaker 1: was a particular I liked that music, and obviously that
Speaker 1: you know, the Bob Dylan and co um So I
Speaker 1: don't know whether it could come back quite in the
Speaker 1: same incarnation, but I think there's always and for any
Speaker 1: type of music, how big its footprint can be. I
Speaker 1: don't know. They were great to stream and it was
Speaker 1: quite unique, right, they certainly had a moment. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you booked the Who, I interrupted you. Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: so I booked the Who. We booked the Who for
Speaker 1: the price mayble, and we pay them four hundred We
Speaker 1: got them for four hundred pounds, which was like probably
Speaker 1: four million now, four hundred pounds for the Who to
Speaker 1: play and this was sixty eight I think sixty seven
Speaker 1: or sixty eight um. And then on the morning of
Speaker 1: the show I get a telegram as they were called then.
Speaker 1: It was Cable as we've known America from Kit a
Speaker 1: kit Lambert Um, dear Mr Rids, Mr Willis, it is
Speaker 1: with sad, great sadness and greatest may that we're uf g.
Speaker 1: Keith Moon has been the drummer has been taken sick
Speaker 1: Vladi bl and we're unable to fulfill tonight's function. Bard.
Speaker 1: Now we were like the Who were like I was
Speaker 1: a massive hoo fan. I love the well it begs,
Speaker 1: the begs the question were you a martyr a rocker?
Speaker 1: Did that even apply a cambridge? It didn't really, Honestly,
Speaker 1: I didn't really feel either way about it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I kept away from both of them because they were
Speaker 1: always in fight, so I didn't actually I didn't wear
Speaker 1: any colors. It didn't that I wasn't aware of it.
Speaker 1: When I was at Cambridge it was more mark. We
Speaker 1: were kind of marching against the bomb and things like that.
Speaker 1: The you know, we were more in that world in
Speaker 1: those days, CND and everything. Um. But anyway, so I thought, well,
Speaker 1: and they can't do that to us, what are we
Speaker 1: going to do? This is our big moment. And as
Speaker 1: you do when you're two, I jumped on a train
Speaker 1: and said, I'm going down to London. I'm going to
Speaker 1: go and talk to this guy Lambert. They can't do this.
Speaker 1: This is day of, day of, morning of, and I said,
Speaker 1: they can't do this. Um. And so I was just
Speaker 1: angry because I didn't know. We I think we actually
Speaker 1: got the family to replaced them, not for four hundred,
Speaker 1: but we got. We knew we gotta go. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to show these people they can't mess with
Speaker 1: this like this just not right and you do these things.
Speaker 1: And I've gone on the train. I walked into Track
Speaker 1: Records and there was kid Lambert and bless his heart,
Speaker 1: because normally if someone like me came on, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: see them. I don't as they get rid of them.
Speaker 1: Lambert though, you know, we'll get into it later is large.
Speaker 1: Was a larger than life character. And I walked in
Speaker 1: there and he says, look, it's terribly sorry. And he
Speaker 1: had this doctor's note and all these things and everything,
Speaker 1: and I suddenly look over his shoulder. I see a
Speaker 1: wall map. You know those kind of war maps you
Speaker 1: do weather the whole month is left, and I see
Speaker 1: on the day of our May the fifteenth May ball,
Speaker 1: it says who Isle of Dogs video? Shoot for dogs.
Speaker 1: There was a song. I said, he's not sick. They're
Speaker 1: doing a video and he fesst up. Kid fesst up,
Speaker 1: he said a little. And you know, I didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: I'm as a twenty one year old kid and dad,
Speaker 1: you know. He said, we're making up. We'll play for
Speaker 1: you next year. I said, well, we're not going to
Speaker 1: be a Camidge. I'm graduating. He said, don't worry. He
Speaker 1: said whatever, whenever you need the who, whenever you want
Speaker 1: to promote, will do it. And there was no legal
Speaker 1: action or anything like that. It was just those I
Speaker 1: don't know. For me, it was an adventure, but um
Speaker 1: turn the clock forward, just a tiny tad and I'm
Speaker 1: preparing for my um um, I'm I'm writing to people
Speaker 1: in the music business for a summer job. Because my
Speaker 1: ambition when I left university was not to go in
Speaker 1: the musics. It was to go into the civil Service,
Speaker 1: the foreigns, the Foreign Service. I wanted to be a diplomat,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to be our Man and Havanna, and
Speaker 1: I wanted whatever the John the Carrier Hero and so
Speaker 1: I picked three people that I thought I would love
Speaker 1: to spend the summer working for. One was Lambert Okay
Speaker 1: Track because they were really doing something special those days,
Speaker 1: obviously Hendrix, the Who Um primarily John's children, Mark Pole
Speaker 1: and Bloody but Um. The other was Andrew Oldham at
Speaker 1: a Media because I love them. That was The Stones
Speaker 1: and people forget Now but the Small Faces um and
Speaker 1: Chris Blackwell at Ireland Traffic was a big favorite band
Speaker 1: of mine, and and I kind of new Spencer Davis
Speaker 1: a little bit and so um that I wrote three letters.
Speaker 1: I heard nothing back for about three or four weeks,
Speaker 1: and one day I'm in my room at Cambridge and
Speaker 1: there's a knock on the door. Um, and hello, Mr
Speaker 1: Lambert sent me, and I said, yeah, Mr kill Lambert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, I said. He said, well, why why have
Speaker 1: you coming? Well? You wrote him a letter, he said,
Speaker 1: asking for employment, but you didn't sign it and he
Speaker 1: didn't know how to contact you. But he guessed because
Speaker 1: of what I had said in the letter that it
Speaker 1: was the person at fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, who because I
Speaker 1: I detailed, you know how we'd met in the over
Speaker 1: the WHO booking fall and through UM. He said it
Speaker 1: must be you, he said, but I obviously it was
Speaker 1: so tired. I was writing these letters and four o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, cramming for exams and UM. To cut
Speaker 1: a long story short, I went down to uh London.
Speaker 1: I met with Kit again at track and this was
Speaker 1: kind of May June or something. He hired me and
Speaker 1: I said, what I'd like to do, you know, take
Speaker 1: the summer off. I want to, you know, go down
Speaker 1: to Morocco and do what all students do. UM. And
Speaker 1: then he said, well, let's start October. One October the
Speaker 1: first nineteen sixty seven started track records twenty pounds a week. Either, Wow,
Speaker 1: that's it, great, fantastic, So off we when I went away,
Speaker 1: the summer went to Morocco, did my thing, got back
Speaker 1: to London, went to take six, bought a snazzy white
Speaker 1: lip jacket and everything turn up. A trap records on
Speaker 1: October the first, at ten o'clock or nine o'clockwards something
Speaker 1: in the morning. No one there. Of course, eventually someone
Speaker 1: staggers in around eleven and they look at me and said,
Speaker 1: well who here, said, well, Kit Lambert employed me. I'm
Speaker 1: starting a trap rugglers the day. And everyone looked to
Speaker 1: me kind of like, oh, yeah, right, and you'll have
Speaker 1: to wait for Kris Stamp to come in. Kids in
Speaker 1: Seattle right now with Hendrix, and that's eight hours ahead.
Speaker 1: We won't behind, we won't be able to get him.
Speaker 1: So Stamp comes in around lunchtime. He said, you know,
Speaker 1: you better sit there and wait till I speak to Kit.
Speaker 1: I I don't know. He didn't tell us, and everyone's
Speaker 1: really weird. They look at me, really Sanath, and this
Speaker 1: isn't very pleasant. And then eventually, at about five o'clock
Speaker 1: that day they get Kits and kids says, oh my god,
Speaker 1: yes I did hire him. Of course I forgot. Yes
Speaker 1: he's fine, he's the boy from Cambridge and what I
Speaker 1: And they said, okay, you're hired. You And what I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that Kit was gay and the kids primary
Speaker 1: pickup line when he went around the cruising the clubs
Speaker 1: was I'll give you a job. So I was one
Speaker 1: of many who had turned up saying that Kit had
Speaker 1: promised them a job. And of course, you know, there
Speaker 1: was no job, but I actually it was real. So
Speaker 1: and that's it, and I that was my kind of
Speaker 1: summer job. I started October the one, and I was
Speaker 1: going to work through till the end of December because
Speaker 1: the civil servicing Sam's didn't take place until January. There
Speaker 1: was going to be a you know, just a temporary job.
Speaker 1: So what happened? Now you're there? What do they give you? Okay, oh,
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing to do the first day, just sending out
Speaker 1: envelopes like every intern gets. But life is a lot
Speaker 1: about luck and circumstance, isn't it. And so it happened
Speaker 1: that when I was there in nine sixty eight, the
Speaker 1: who were in IBC Studios in Portland Place recording and
Speaker 1: our well called Tommy. I don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: make a big deal about this, but the job you
Speaker 1: said was October one, six seven, but really was oct
Speaker 1: Correct sixty eight. Sorry, yes, sorry, yes, that's right. Um
Speaker 1: so um they were doing the who were doing? To
Speaker 1: tell me so obviously when you sit around with at
Speaker 1: that moment, Kit Who had a lot of faults And
Speaker 1: I know Bill went through a lot of this with
Speaker 1: you on his podcast about Kit. But there was another
Speaker 1: side to Kit that was pure genius. Um. He's like
Speaker 1: many people in this world that we live in the
Speaker 1: world of art, a tragic genius Um faults, warts and all.
Speaker 1: I maintained that would not have been a Who without
Speaker 1: Kid because he had the vision. He had that Z
Speaker 1: thing that drove Pete Townsend um. And I think Pete
Speaker 1: would acknowledge that to you now he has to me recently,
Speaker 1: Uh that without Kick came up with so many of
Speaker 1: the ideas, the breaking of this behind anyway, that Kit
Speaker 1: was producing the record in the studio and he was
Speaker 1: saying one day, and as as he would in France,
Speaker 1: he said, would you try and check out some opera
Speaker 1: houses for me? Um he went to Kamide. You must
Speaker 1: know about opera um go and bok So. So I thought, right, well,
Speaker 1: this is the who and Um, let me see what
Speaker 1: I can do. I went around, I talked I hustle
Speaker 1: and I checked I phone, and the end result was
Speaker 1: that we played at the Colosseum in London, which is
Speaker 1: home to the English National Opera, in Saint Martin's Lane,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the first performances of Tommy ever.
Speaker 1: We went on and played a number of concerts around
Speaker 1: Europe and they were all successful. The concerned about in
Speaker 1: Holland the elease a theater in Paris or prestigious non
Speaker 1: prestigious concert tours or venues which catered more mostly to opera,
Speaker 1: not to content, not to popular music, and it was
Speaker 1: kind of a big deal. Um, So they said, well,
Speaker 1: why don't you go to We'd like to send you
Speaker 1: to America. And he said, there's two things. One is,
Speaker 1: you know, go over there and see if you will
Speaker 1: find an opera house in New York. And I thought yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that we've got our contract
Speaker 1: with our agent is over and everybody is coming around
Speaker 1: because the who were hot, they were about to break everything.
Speaker 1: They were kind of like, you know, they were moving
Speaker 1: from the three thousand to the five thousand to the
Speaker 1: eight thousand capacity venues. Everyone knew they were gonna pop
Speaker 1: and so all the big agencies were coming to take
Speaker 1: a look, but we were with this guy, Frank Barcelona.
Speaker 1: He's a really good agent and he's got a small
Speaker 1: kind of boutique agency called Premier Talent. But William Morris
Speaker 1: wants them. This one wants and that one wants them,
Speaker 1: and so you should take me eatings with him and
Speaker 1: see what we can do. And so I got on
Speaker 1: the plane of v C ten and I flew into London,
Speaker 1: into New York and the first time I went was
Speaker 1: to Frank Barcelona's office to meet him up at two
Speaker 1: D West fifty seventh Street, and within like an ary
Speaker 1: had me hooked. I just felt, you know, that this
Speaker 1: guy was really something. He had a great act, but
Speaker 1: you could just tell there was something special about him.
Speaker 1: I then went and met other agents. It's funnily enough,
Speaker 1: one of the agents I met at William Morris who
Speaker 1: was attempting to get take the band from Frank, was
Speaker 1: Steve Lieber. Steve Leeber was, yeah, Steve Lever was. It
Speaker 1: was Steve Lieber and Jim Taft. Jim Taft sadly passed
Speaker 1: away very young age, but yeah, Steve Leeber was really
Speaker 1: hustling me. Now, you couldn't find more different people than
Speaker 1: Steve Lieber and Frank Barcelona. But I went back and
Speaker 1: they were offering reduced commissions and things like that, and
Speaker 1: a t I was saying, you'll do it for this,
Speaker 1: and I just I don't know. I had a gut film.
Speaker 1: I called Chris back, Chris stamback because he tended to
Speaker 1: handle that side of it more and kit the records.
Speaker 1: I said, I think we should stay with Frank Varcelona.
Speaker 1: He's a great agent. He really knows I got. I
Speaker 1: just get a great feel, he really gets the who.
Speaker 1: And I saw the rest of his roster and I
Speaker 1: saw a little bit. I mean, I didn't know him
Speaker 1: as well as I got to know him. And so
Speaker 1: we stayed with Frank. And the other thing was that
Speaker 1: I managed to get on the phone the general manager
Speaker 1: when I was there. I was twenty three, I think
Speaker 1: of the Metropolitan Opera House, and it was a guy
Speaker 1: called Herman Crawitz, who later became known as being Barishnikov's manager,
Speaker 1: and he blessed his heart, agreed to see me. The
Speaker 1: guy who ran the met in those days was Sir Rudolph,
Speaker 1: being an Englishman, and he was fascinated by the fact
Speaker 1: that this guy was coming and trying to get the
Speaker 1: Who to play the Trobln Operas. No one had played
Speaker 1: the Metropoln Operas other than opera people in that that time.
Speaker 1: No one even thought about who weren't the biggest when
Speaker 1: you know, with it was Sinatra or Presley or some
Speaker 1: of those people, you could understand there was maybe a conversation,
Speaker 1: but no, it was it was the Who and Rudolph
Speaker 1: being we've we we blanked it and we got it.
Speaker 1: And on July seventh, um, you know, um that sixty nine,
Speaker 1: I think seven seventy, July seven seventy, it was new
Speaker 1: action that wise Bill Graham presents the Who at the
Speaker 1: Metroboln Operas with two shows. I think it's actually says
Speaker 1: on the post that doesn't it last performance ever of Tommy?
Speaker 1: I think it did. I think it did. David Birds,
Speaker 1: I saw that the previous spring they did the Spring,
Speaker 1: and previously they did the Spring and then they did
Speaker 1: the Fall for a week at the fillmore East at
Speaker 1: the film. Well yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, but this this
Speaker 1: does beg the question of something you mentioned earlier. Uh,
Speaker 1: in August they played Woodstock. Needless to say, the movie
Speaker 1: turns them into superstars. Did you go to Woodstock or
Speaker 1: very interestingly, Um, one of the jobs you asked I
Speaker 1: was given when I got there was to go through
Speaker 1: and sort all the contracts because they were all over
Speaker 1: the place. No one was taking looking after them at all.
Speaker 1: And one of the first contrasts that passed my desk
Speaker 1: was the who for Woodstock twelve and a half thousand
Speaker 1: dollars um. That was their feet and no airfare's no
Speaker 1: hotels twelve and a half thousand dollars um. But no,
Speaker 1: I was not at Woodstock. No, I didn't fly over
Speaker 1: till afterwood Stock. Okay. So now in the spring of
Speaker 1: seventy the who were just really blowing up. And this
Speaker 1: is it's not to the fall, I think, or maybe
Speaker 1: this No, it's actually the late spring. It's who live
Speaker 1: it leads. So what are your duty? What are your
Speaker 1: duties other than selecting Barcelona making the gig? My duties
Speaker 1: were And then this is where I just need to
Speaker 1: step back. I mean to put it into context. And
Speaker 1: my memory of events is slightly different than bills. Um,
Speaker 1: what happened the track was Kit and Chris. It did
Speaker 1: get out of control, Okay, Um, they were not on
Speaker 1: top of it. Kit was still Kit and he was
Speaker 1: still coming in with crazy ideas about videos with Michael
Speaker 1: Lindsay about album covers like stamped in Fairness came up
Speaker 1: with the live at Leeds idea for the album cover.
Speaker 1: They still had that. There were filmmakers, That's how they
Speaker 1: they got into the music business because they were looking
Speaker 1: for a band to make a film about Okay to
Speaker 1: To To To as a metaphor for hip for London
Speaker 1: as it was in the sixties. So they were there,
Speaker 1: but they weren't taking care of business. And I, because
Speaker 1: of my initial kind of success with the opera houses,
Speaker 1: my responsibilities were to a great extent, love to do
Speaker 1: most of the live stuff. However, what happened is I
Speaker 1: was at track, there were a few other people there.
Speaker 1: The guy might sure that Bill talks about was there,
Speaker 1: and then Bill joined, and then so Bill and I
Speaker 1: basically we're kind of mucking in and doing all the
Speaker 1: day to day stuff at the record company, the management company,
Speaker 1: et cetera. There I went over to America in nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: I fell in love with it when I drove over
Speaker 1: that tribe of Bridge the first time. I probably didn't
Speaker 1: go to bed for ten days. I just felt I
Speaker 1: fell in love with New York, the energy, the pace,
Speaker 1: just everything about it. I thought this is for me.
Speaker 1: So I kind of became the American end of it
Speaker 1: and Bill and either which Bill doesn't mention, and I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure why. I feel a little bit stalinized.
Speaker 1: We were partners. Bill and I had a pack. We
Speaker 1: were doing things together. We kind of brought in Golden Earring.
Speaker 1: I did Golden Earring in America. Bill did most of
Speaker 1: it in England. The show at the Lyceum that Bill
Speaker 1: references they were supporting Mountain. I picked up Mountain because
Speaker 1: Frank introduced me to Gary Kirk First. I got to
Speaker 1: know and become very friendly with Gary firsts and Bud
Speaker 1: Praeger so and Gary was going to do things for
Speaker 1: me with Bud in America. And we handle Mountain in
Speaker 1: Europe and booked the tours. That's why Golden Ring were on.
Speaker 1: And I remember being at that very same Lyceum show
Speaker 1: the Bill Bill references, So Bill and I were kind
Speaker 1: of partners, and I handled America. I was there during
Speaker 1: the Tommy film premier down on the fifty seven Street
Speaker 1: subway station and all those things. So everything that Bill
Speaker 1: said factually is correct. That's how it was. It was
Speaker 1: my I found the office of Steve O. Rooks. I
Speaker 1: know this is he me. He shouldn't. I don't want
Speaker 1: it to be like that because Steve I had been
Speaker 1: a friend of from the very beginning. Um, so Bill
Speaker 1: and I were doing that together. Then when Kit and
Speaker 1: Chris kind of fine, the went THO who said Bill
Speaker 1: and I were offered the management, we were off and
Speaker 1: I remember it was like twelve and a half percent
Speaker 1: commission or something, I remember distinctly, So we kind of
Speaker 1: shared it. Now what happened was that I got headhunted
Speaker 1: by the Stones because the American tours of The Who
Speaker 1: they were pretty good, that Who live show, and you
Speaker 1: saw it, Bob with Tommy I still maintains the best
Speaker 1: live show I've ever seen. Well, it's I have three
Speaker 1: in my mind, and that's one of the top three. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really was, you know, just those moments listening to
Speaker 1: you with the with the lay everything, it just and
Speaker 1: The Who were an incredible live band. They could play
Speaker 1: out of tune, they could play out of time. But
Speaker 1: that raw energy that came off that stage, much of
Speaker 1: it driven by Mood because he kept towns and going towns,
Speaker 1: and was never exactly I remember watching Moon when people
Speaker 1: don't you literally couldn't believe all that sound was coming
Speaker 1: from one guy. Credible. It's like it had to be
Speaker 1: two people up there. Yeah, it was all over the
Speaker 1: place too. I mean, you know, Pete often had to
Speaker 1: play the drums on the records because Keith just I
Speaker 1: mean he couldn't, you know, and he just had one
Speaker 1: way of doing it. But on stage it was stunning.
Speaker 1: They were stunning. I mean, I've seen some great bands
Speaker 1: like you are, Pearl Jaman this, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of good bands. There's a lot of great
Speaker 1: food fighters. But boy, that Who show with Tommy was something,
Speaker 1: you know, with the with the mix of those great
Speaker 1: Who's songs and then you know summertime blues and things
Speaker 1: like that was just incredible shows and everything. So they
Speaker 1: did well. So that Who were playing at the Forum. Uh,
Speaker 1: and Jagger came to see the show, and I think
Speaker 1: Charlie I don't know, and he kind of sidled up
Speaker 1: to me backstage and said, oh, yeah we should talk.
Speaker 1: This was post ultimont, remember, so they had a little
Speaker 1: bit of uh, you know, damaged control. And I never
Speaker 1: thought anything of it, you know, And I went out
Speaker 1: to London didn't think anything. I can't even remember an
Speaker 1: exact date of it, but but we'll get onto that.
Speaker 1: To go to your story, I was really we did everything.
Speaker 1: I remember, great story. Remember walking in with the masters
Speaker 1: of Tommy under my arm into the m c A
Speaker 1: offices at four or four or five Park Avenue. Tony
Speaker 1: Martel was was working there and another guy called Jack
Speaker 1: Lots I think was m c A in the East Coast,
Speaker 1: and I presented Tommy to them, the record playing, and
Speaker 1: they said, don't worry, you've come to the right record company. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we have just released. We have just done a great job.
Speaker 1: What was the Richard Harris musical? Oh there was one.
Speaker 1: It was like some corny middle of the road sound.
Speaker 1: It was awful. And I knew there and then that
Speaker 1: we had a problem. We had to deal with it
Speaker 1: all ourselves. And that's when I bonded with Frank and
Speaker 1: Frank and said, Frank, you know, these people are totally
Speaker 1: unrelated to the Who. They have nothing in common with
Speaker 1: the Who. And you know, these are the days, remember Bob,
Speaker 1: when radio was was Paul Drake and the Archaeo Radio
Speaker 1: twenty records a week, right, it was I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: this business never changes. The words, the names changed, and
Speaker 1: this and that change, and the roots direction may change,
Speaker 1: but that the aim has always been the same. And
Speaker 1: it was really really tough then to for bands like Who.
Speaker 1: They had no home and so I did everything and
Speaker 1: I went back to him and Bill and I but
Speaker 1: to finish the Bill story. Um, obviously we were young.
Speaker 1: We had the Stones, we had the Who. I had
Speaker 1: picked up Leonard's skinnerd um, you know, because we put
Speaker 1: them on the tour with the Who in America in
Speaker 1: seventy three. I knew Al Cooper. I got to know
Speaker 1: Al Cooper and a few things, and they were on
Speaker 1: the same label, so um Skinner where there was a
Speaker 1: lot going on, and I was young and Bill and
Speaker 1: it was too much for me and Bill, and it
Speaker 1: was difficult to man the Who and the Stones because
Speaker 1: essentially you were it was like now if you had
Speaker 1: Lady Garb, I suppose Nary and Grandy who who which
Speaker 1: artists you give it to? It was kind of there
Speaker 1: was a conflict, and there was there was natural jealousies,
Speaker 1: particularly by Roger and the Who about the stones, and
Speaker 1: the Stones always seemed to be that tad ahead in
Speaker 1: terms of the media. Um, if Roger had taken a look,
Speaker 1: he'd have understood maybe Mick Jandal, Roger Daltrey so Um.
Speaker 1: But it was a difficult situation and Bill and I
Speaker 1: kind of fell out, and we've hardly ways. So I
Speaker 1: stayed with the Stones, He went on with the Who.
Speaker 1: I stayed with Skinner, and obviously, because that was my band,
Speaker 1: I signed UM and I've been in America ever since.
Speaker 1: For all intents and purposes. Bill and I didn't talk
Speaker 1: for a while, but then we got together and it
Speaker 1: was all very silly. Why we didn't It was stupid
Speaker 1: and it probably much my fault as anybody's. Um, maybe
Speaker 1: I became a little bit of a diva in those days. Bill,
Speaker 1: as you know, very solid, very measured, very steady. Not me.
Speaker 1: I'm a totally different animal, and i'd probably, like you know,
Speaker 1: it was not a very pleasant person for a while. UM,
Speaker 1: and Bill and I drifted apart. Now we're back. We're
Speaker 1: good friends, very good friends. Okay, So what year did
Speaker 1: the two of you go your separate ways? If Quadrophenia
Speaker 1: was seventy three and the Timmy Movie was seventy five. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it was more like seventy seven, seventy eight. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of the planet the Skin had plane crash
Speaker 1: with seven. Yeah, uh, it must have been seventies seven.
Speaker 1: Must have been around that bomb. Okay, custody because I
Speaker 1: worked Quadrophene. I remember doing Quadrophenia. Boy work in that record,
Speaker 1: and we're doing all the tours. I remember that what
Speaker 1: album came after Quadrophenia? Who's Next? Yes? No, No, Who's
Speaker 1: Next came before Who by Numbers? Who by Numbers? That
Speaker 1: was the album where I shifted out. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the Stones for a second. So you got
Speaker 1: involved in the seventy two Stones tour. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: my first tour. Okay, a little bit slower you run
Speaker 1: into Uh, we'll just go so on paper it was
Speaker 1: you and Bill for the Stones. It was me. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the story. So Jagger sidals up to me
Speaker 1: at the Forum, bladih blah blah. Develum there I hear
Speaker 1: nothing about it. Fly back to England. Um, another guy
Speaker 1: got involved. There was everybody was after the Stones. So
Speaker 1: Madison Square Garden Corporation, we're in there. David get In
Speaker 1: was in there. Um, and a group of people headed
Speaker 1: up by a guy called John Morris, who you may
Speaker 1: know through Woodstock was one of the guys with Michael
Speaker 1: lang what. He was one of the original partners in Woodstock,
Speaker 1: married to an English girl called Anne Weldon who worked
Speaker 1: for me and Bill. So John was really really trying
Speaker 1: to get the stones, and he was talking the talk,
Speaker 1: and apparently there was a meeting with John Robert h.
Speaker 1: John Morris and the Stones where my name came up.
Speaker 1: I don't know in what context or exactly who brought
Speaker 1: it up, but the short along the short of the
Speaker 1: story is that John Morris called me and said, Peter, um,
Speaker 1: you know the Stones are going with me. Would you
Speaker 1: like to be part of it? And I thought, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: sure of course I would. I was in New York.
Speaker 1: But then something happened and John Morris suddenly fell out
Speaker 1: of the of the equation and I got a call
Speaker 1: from Rupert Lowenstein. I'm mean, I mean, I hardly really
Speaker 1: didn't know who he was. St Peter, would you come
Speaker 1: the Mick and the boys would like to meet with you.
Speaker 1: Could you be in Los Angeles and meet When they
Speaker 1: were at the Beverly Hills Hotel, meet with us. So
Speaker 1: I flew out. I went to Rupert's bungalow. They were
Speaker 1: all there. We spent about two hours talking. I was
Speaker 1: pretty irreverent. Um, but I'm kind of quickly sussed out
Speaker 1: what the key angles were that Keith was really, we
Speaker 1: don't want to charge more too much money. Mick wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that the show was spect tacular and profitable. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they said they we we seem to have
Speaker 1: a good conversation. And they said to me, I said,
Speaker 1: I got to fly back to him. I went from
Speaker 1: New York to Los Angeles and I had to fly
Speaker 1: back to England from Los Angeles. Said, will you, um,
Speaker 1: you know, will you make it? Will you make a prophecy?
Speaker 1: Will you know, make an offer? Not an offer, but
Speaker 1: how you would book the tour, how you would do it?
Speaker 1: And um, So I flew back and on that thirteen
Speaker 1: hour flight back, I wrote like about fifteen pages handwritten
Speaker 1: of how I would do the tour, when I would charge,
Speaker 1: where I would play, what I all those things. And
Speaker 1: I sent it to them and it was full of
Speaker 1: swear words, and it was full of it was really illiterate.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just a ramble and next thing
Speaker 1: I know, I get a course saying they'd like to
Speaker 1: have another meeting with you about you doing the tour,
Speaker 1: and I was in America. The first tour I did
Speaker 1: was seventy two. The set that finished on July the
Speaker 1: twenty six, seventy two at Madison Square Garden. The next
Speaker 1: tour they did was was Your Then we were going
Speaker 1: to go to Japan. We couldn't because of Keith's drug No,
Speaker 1: it was mixed. It was because of mix um, I
Speaker 1: think the Robert Fraser thing with Mary Anne. Because of
Speaker 1: his drug conviction. The Japanese wouldn't let us in. That's
Speaker 1: when we did the Benefit for Nicaragua in Hawaii. But
Speaker 1: the next European tour was seventy three. Bill was my partner,
Speaker 1: so I said, Bill, will you handle it? Will you
Speaker 1: book it? We're partners, And that's where it came that
Speaker 1: it was me and Bill. So in many respects it
Speaker 1: was both Bill and I, but Bill was the Who
Speaker 1: and I was the Stones and all the kind of
Speaker 1: all the key decisions and all the meetings in respect
Speaker 1: to the Stones I attended. Bill didn't, and Bill kind
Speaker 1: of became much closer to the Who than me and
Speaker 1: I became much closer to the Stones, okay, a little
Speaker 1: bit slower. Seventy two tour is in wake of Exile
Speaker 1: on Main Street. You work with the Stones starting in
Speaker 1: seventy two, and when did you stop working with them?
Speaker 1: I stopped. The last tour I did with the Stones, Bob,
Speaker 1: was the seventy eight American tour. Yeah, before tattoo you okay,
Speaker 1: So were you only involved in the tours? Were involved
Speaker 1: in creative strategies on the album? What were your responsibilities
Speaker 1: everything at all things? Um? I remember very much being
Speaker 1: not so much with Exile because that was mid recording.
Speaker 1: That was almost kind of like out of the incubator.
Speaker 1: When the time I got involved, they were made. That's
Speaker 1: why they were in the recording that at Sunset. But
Speaker 1: I was very much involved in everything after that. I
Speaker 1: mean you were because the Stones were self managed. I mean,
Speaker 1: Mick ultimately is the is the manager of the Stones,
Speaker 1: and so whoever he's got his his sidekick has to
Speaker 1: really do everything and we had to work very closely
Speaker 1: with Atlantic in an armored and his team in kind
Speaker 1: of coordinating everything. I remember me and Mick going to
Speaker 1: meetings like with Jesse Jackson after some Girls you know,
Speaker 1: because of the line black Girls like to Fuck All Night.
Speaker 1: So I Marshall Chess run Rolling Stones Records. So he
Speaker 1: was the guy who kind of sat inside Atlantic and
Speaker 1: he did the Meters, you know, because the Meters got
Speaker 1: signed to Rolling Stones Records and that, so he was involved.
Speaker 1: But I kind of, Bob, it's a bit like with
Speaker 1: the who you kind of do what you did in
Speaker 1: those days what was necessary to do. And I mean
Speaker 1: I've always said the best model for a band is
Speaker 1: at that three sixty model, where the manager is, the
Speaker 1: agent is, the promoter is, the publisher is the record company,
Speaker 1: because you're only focus is the brand and what's good
Speaker 1: for the brand is good for you. I do feel
Speaker 1: that right one of the problems with our industry right
Speaker 1: now it continues to be siloed, where the publishers have
Speaker 1: an agenda that's that benefits the publisher, the labels sell product,
Speaker 1: the promoter sell tickets, and you know, sometimes the brand
Speaker 1: and the band get four in between. The problem with
Speaker 1: that model and Ireland had it, and Track had it,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people have got it and starting
Speaker 1: to come back now. It was subject to a great
Speaker 1: deal of abuse. Financially, there was no checks or balances.
Speaker 1: Then remember the lawyers hadn't taken over our business. So um.
Speaker 1: So into respect to the Stones, I did not get
Speaker 1: paid on the record sales. I got paid on touring,
Speaker 1: okay by the Stones, but with who I got paid
Speaker 1: on records, publishing everything whatever a manager would get. Um.
Speaker 1: But I got very fairly compensated by the Stones on
Speaker 1: all the touring. But I did a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I did a lot of stuff in respect of the Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's go back. You fly back for thirteen hours
Speaker 1: to u K. You say, how much are you going
Speaker 1: to charge? Is it a flat fear into the percentage? No?
Speaker 1: That one when I said charge, it was the ticket prices.
Speaker 1: So the Rolling Stone was four fifty five fifty top price,
Speaker 1: six fifty. That was the prod. That's what it was. Um.
Speaker 1: Keith was adamant that it shouldn't be more than six
Speaker 1: fifty top ticket. Most of them were reserved seating in
Speaker 1: those days, except like the winter Land ball rooms and
Speaker 1: things of that nature. So that that that that's the
Speaker 1: ticket price that for instance applied to Madison Square. Gone.
Speaker 1: Um that I negotiated all the deals. There was no
Speaker 1: agent on the Stones tour I did the negotiations directly
Speaker 1: with the Bill grahams, you know, the Don Laws, Larry
Speaker 1: Maggid's whatever, and um. The deals we drove were tough
Speaker 1: and they were kind of I mean this whole conversation again,
Speaker 1: I know you had it with Bill. When did nine
Speaker 1: ten start? Was kind of around in those days because
Speaker 1: Jerry Weintraub was starting to put together national tours. He firstly,
Speaker 1: I think with President you know, first thing, I believe
Speaker 1: with Sinatra he got then he did press Lee with Parker,
Speaker 1: and then he got into the Zeppelin and Grant and
Speaker 1: those deals were garret, but they were predicated. They're calibrated
Speaker 1: on net receipts rather than gross receipts. Back in the
Speaker 1: day before then, for instance, most deals were done in
Speaker 1: the artist favor of the gross okay less maybe applicable
Speaker 1: taxes with a guarantee. So a typical deal for you know,
Speaker 1: a Winterland show would be thirty thousand two dollars against
Speaker 1: or plus. However good an agent or manager you are
Speaker 1: s the grows. Bill Graham had a different deal to
Speaker 1: everybody else. Bill Graham had a fifty fifty deal because
Speaker 1: he was Bill Graham and he was brilliant. I mean
Speaker 1: grew up one of the greatest showman of our time. Brilliant.
Speaker 1: Not a great promoter and ticket seller, but what a producer. Um.
Speaker 1: He used to have fifty fifty because he figured out
Speaker 1: that every the area that promoters tried to cut costs
Speaker 1: on was backstage, and that they did not want to
Speaker 1: spend money on food, on drinks, on all those accessories
Speaker 1: that the artists may ask for, that that that's just
Speaker 1: a waste of money. Bill on the other hand, would
Speaker 1: put up palm trees, would put up He'd find out
Speaker 1: that bands, certain bands like table tennis tables. He'd have
Speaker 1: table tennis, he'd have inflatable pools, even he'd have Hawaiian
Speaker 1: cookouts and things like that. What the acts didn't know
Speaker 1: was they were paying for it because Bill got a
Speaker 1: fifty fifty deal and he kind of seduced the artists.
Speaker 1: So the artists would never play San Francisco, would never
Speaker 1: play New York, would never play where without Bill Graham
Speaker 1: and you were stunned because Bill had a favorable deal.
Speaker 1: So the band's made less money, but they had a
Speaker 1: better time. But so the Stones tour was based on
Speaker 1: a net deal Um with a guarantee, but we kind
Speaker 1: of there was no there were no flat deals and
Speaker 1: there were no gross deals. There weren't necessary. They're often
Speaker 1: stepped those deals and you get x amount of this
Speaker 1: and this and this great figure. But it was the
Speaker 1: time when it was going from gross because you didn't
Speaker 1: trust the promoter. So you've got what you can, which
Speaker 1: is still the case in some markets, particularly in the
Speaker 1: far eastern India, where you're not going to do an
Speaker 1: audit on an Indian promoter. It's but you try getting
Speaker 1: a real ticket count out of a Japanese promoter, you're
Speaker 1: not going to get it um, so you take the
Speaker 1: money and run. Mentality that that was ending in America
Speaker 1: there was a more transparent then, and with Barcelona in particular,
Speaker 1: because Barcelona's genius was that he didn't just represent acts.
Speaker 1: He found promoters to represent and develop. And what he
Speaker 1: saw was that his acts were going to be abused
Speaker 1: and go nowhere if there wasn't a great promoter there
Speaker 1: who was going to help develop them. So I always
Speaker 1: used Don Laura as a classic example in the Boston area,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you're very familiar with. So Don, so Don, right,
Speaker 1: is there, lovely fresh faced on Law, Buddlewood and melt
Speaker 1: in his mouth, right, clean cut, lovely boy. Okay, Frank
Speaker 1: goes to Don don we need clubs. You've got a
Speaker 1: club Boston, tea party all. And this is why Live
Speaker 1: is so it is so different from from everything else
Speaker 1: in the business in terms of its relationship with the artist.
Speaker 1: Done what we need here? We've only got AM radio,
Speaker 1: Paul Drake. These bands are not catered for. There's this
Speaker 1: guy in San Francisco called Tom Donahue who's starting something
Speaker 1: called FM radio and Case. Then he said, we've got
Speaker 1: to get on board list with those are the outlets
Speaker 1: that we can promote our bands through. So Dr Frank
Speaker 1: I BELOWD Frank was very tight with Tom Donahue and yeah,
Speaker 1: this is an agent. But Frank had a vision. He
Speaker 1: saw he said, I got it, I need it, he said,
Speaker 1: he said. So Frank was very instrumental in fn X,
Speaker 1: for instance, in Boston with Oedipus, uh MMS in Cleveland,
Speaker 1: MMR in Philadelphia, Case, then obviously in San Francisco, m
Speaker 1: ET in Los Angeles, and Frank made sure that his
Speaker 1: promoters worked with those stations exclusively got the lay wars.
Speaker 1: He was also the only agent. I know that was
Speaker 1: really worked cleverly with record companies. He'd be very tight
Speaker 1: with a Bob riguere at Warners, who was such a
Speaker 1: cool label, and Moe Austin very tight with Armored and
Speaker 1: Bob Rowlands at Atlantic. So he made sure that those
Speaker 1: labels supported those stations. And the other thing was to
Speaker 1: create the Internet of the seventies was we needed newsprint.
Speaker 1: So don you've got to We've got to support this
Speaker 1: Boston Phoenix paper. It's underground paper, it's a free newspaper,
Speaker 1: but it's the one that kids read with the Village
Speaker 1: Voice in the l a week. So what Frank did
Speaker 1: was he took these young guys. They had to have
Speaker 1: a club, they had to have scale and venues that
Speaker 1: you could scale out. And he represented those promoters. And
Speaker 1: god forbid you screwed or funk with one of those promoters,
Speaker 1: or you've screwed or funk Frank because they were out okay,
Speaker 1: And he would move promoters around. But they were all
Speaker 1: good promoters. They were all hungry promoters. They loved music.
Speaker 1: I remember Brian Murphy, who you'll know was I remember
Speaker 1: the first meeting Brian Murphy. He was production manager for
Speaker 1: Northwest release and in Seattle. Frank had a big saying
Speaker 1: Brian coming down to l A and starting up and
Speaker 1: working in Los Angeles Promotor. So the same with Larry
Speaker 1: Valence a little bit so who worked when he worked
Speaker 1: with Steve Wolf and Jim Rismiller. So I think Frank
Speaker 1: was a genius in that sense that he had that vision,
Speaker 1: he brought it together. That was our internet. That's the
Speaker 1: only way we could connect with the kids. There was nothing, really,
Speaker 1: there was no music on TV to talk of. There
Speaker 1: was there there was. This wasn't tabloid manner. It wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't kind of you know, mainstream culture. It was
Speaker 1: a fringe. It was like, you know, I remember the
Speaker 1: first role in Stone's tour. I did I spend as
Speaker 1: much time trying to book a hotel as I did
Speaker 1: a venue. They didn't want us in. They were scared
Speaker 1: of us. We were a threat. We actually were a threat.
Speaker 1: And that you know, it was lock up your daughters
Speaker 1: and the police would get promoted if they bust Keith Richards.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that there there was genuine fear and um,
Speaker 1: I mean it leads to fascinating stories, but it was
Speaker 1: a totally different context that rock and roll thrived in
Speaker 1: those days, Uma, and it was wonderful. But Barcelona, I'm
Speaker 1: so happy that I've got the opportunity to say this
Speaker 1: to whoever's listening to this. Without him, I often wonder
Speaker 1: would there be live Nation Because Frank was the one
Speaker 1: who called all the promoters together when wine trout and
Speaker 1: concerts West, We're going to do the ninety tens apline tours.
Speaker 1: Because Frank, sorry, he's not stupid, he saw that that
Speaker 1: would eliminate the need for an agency as well, and
Speaker 1: and pull them together with Bill Graham in particular, and
Speaker 1: Bill took the fight and said, look, we cannot do
Speaker 1: national tours. Um. Of course Bill was one of the
Speaker 1: first people to do a national tour. He did the
Speaker 1: stuffs right after me, so you know so. But nonetheless
Speaker 1: I do wonder, if not how the business would have
Speaker 1: changed if Frank and Bill had lived a little longer. Um.
Speaker 1: They both passed far too early, both of them, Bill
Speaker 1: in particular. Of course, you know, UM fascinating times though,
Speaker 1: because you look back now and you realize that you
Speaker 1: were making up all these rules as you went along,
Speaker 1: and this little cottage industry was morphing into something much bigger. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: let's go back to seventy two because that was a
Speaker 1: transformative tour. First, what was your deal with the Stones?
Speaker 1: I was on a percentage of their profit. Ah Uh,
Speaker 1: it's is pretty good. I mean I come complain and
Speaker 1: they made good money. Uh. They were always very fair
Speaker 1: with me. They gave me a percentage of their profit. Okay,
Speaker 1: So let's talk seventy two. The Stones always had hit Singleste.
Speaker 1: They have Let It Bleed. Uh, they do get your
Speaker 1: yah yahs after that, the live album, they have Altimant.
Speaker 1: They have a presence. But you could buy tickets for
Speaker 1: the sur when they go to They hadn't been in
Speaker 1: America since sixty seventy two. It's literally like the return
Speaker 1: of God. Okay. There is press everywhere, never mind Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: but Life magazine. You have Princess Lee Radzewill on the tour.
Speaker 1: You have Truman Capodi on the tour, who orchestrated all that. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't want to sound self serving, but that was
Speaker 1: like a lot of stuff that me and Mike did.
Speaker 1: Um mixed brilliant at this is a maestro and he's
Speaker 1: like be eased to the honey. I mean, people would
Speaker 1: gravitate around him. What we did by design with that
Speaker 1: that talk, we booked it very time. We could have
Speaker 1: gone and played bigger venues, Bob, but there's I have
Speaker 1: a mantra it's better to turn a hundred people away
Speaker 1: than have one empty seat. And so it's all about
Speaker 1: supply and demand creates perception, and we booked it particularly
Speaker 1: strategically major markets. We booked it the right kind of venues.
Speaker 1: We also added on elements that other people did hadn't done.
Speaker 1: For instance, we took any leave of it's as our
Speaker 1: tour photographer. Now, obviously at that time Rolling Stone was
Speaker 1: by far the largest media platform for music in the world.
Speaker 1: Annie would have we we would give. We sat with
Speaker 1: Yan before the tour Yam Winner, and we said, look,
Speaker 1: you can always have a Rolling Stone journalist on the
Speaker 1: tour with us. So we had Check Flippo, Bob Greenfield,
Speaker 1: all the guys. They were always there. I mean, who
Speaker 1: had Dave Marsh. I think Dave Marsh was doing some
Speaker 1: string left cream. I think he was around in the
Speaker 1: role and stumming. I can't remember, but so we had
Speaker 1: that embedded in the talk. We had Lisa Robinson, the
Speaker 1: biggest mouth in the business. Then the head of Hopper
Speaker 1: of rock and Roll embedded in the tour, traveling with us,
Speaker 1: feeding stuff out every day to gossip columns. We thought
Speaker 1: of all that stuff because that's the game, that's the show,
Speaker 1: I mean. And you've got a frontman like the Stones
Speaker 1: coming off Alter mot with an album like Exile. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Bob, you're asking me, And when you put
Speaker 1: it like that, I say, did we And yeah, I
Speaker 1: suppose we did. We. Also, the production was pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: That that mirror that the chip Right designed, that was
Speaker 1: like pretty staggering, and it was really cool because no
Speaker 1: one had really ever toured with seven super troopers across
Speaker 1: the stage like that short like throw. I mean, so
Speaker 1: everything we tried to do we tried to differently. One
Speaker 1: of the one of the one of the things which
Speaker 1: isn't doesn't manifest itself in the public arena, but one
Speaker 1: of the issues we we we our anticipate we anticipated
Speaker 1: early on. The unions were strong in all these arenas,
Speaker 1: very very strong, and we kept hearing problems that all
Speaker 1: these bands had, especially English bands who didn't understand the
Speaker 1: culture of America in getting cooperation and getting fair bills
Speaker 1: from the Union guys in the venues, so we unionized.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I got to know the
Speaker 1: guys at Madison Square Garden because we were competitors for
Speaker 1: the tour, and one of the guys I bought Mike Crowley,
Speaker 1: who was head of security at Madison Square Garden um
Speaker 1: but he also was kind of general manager and had
Speaker 1: contacts with all the unions. We made out tour unions,
Speaker 1: so we were the first tour ever to do a
Speaker 1: union trucking company bonded Clark Transfer out of Philadelphia. We
Speaker 1: had union everything. So we walked in there they were
Speaker 1: all old mates because these were the guys. Our crew
Speaker 1: was essentially picked from all the ice shows and all
Speaker 1: the circus shows, all the Tommy Collins stuff that came
Speaker 1: out of Minneapolis. We didn't use rock and roll rhotors.
Speaker 1: We used hardcore union guys who were on the same team,
Speaker 1: and we had no problems, no problems at all. The
Speaker 1: entire toy made it run very smoothly. But we we
Speaker 1: we would always put on like we bought on a
Speaker 1: guy called Christopher Sykes, who was kind of part of
Speaker 1: the aristocracy in Britain, was a photographer and we let
Speaker 1: him photograph and he did a book. We brought Terry
Speaker 1: Southern in. Terry did a book. We brought in, Um,
Speaker 1: who else did we bring in on the tour? Um?
Speaker 1: Well you brought in? Uh wasn't it the Franks who
Speaker 1: did Coxsucker Blues? Oh? Robert Frank and Danny Seymour. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us about that. Oh gee, it was a night
Speaker 1: there for me. But you know, Robert was a lovely man.
Speaker 1: Danny was was tough. He was a heroin addict and
Speaker 1: he was difficult. That was his kind of a Das
Speaker 1: his cameraman, Robert was really cool. I mean he just
Speaker 1: kept to his own world. He hung with Keith most
Speaker 1: of the time. Um, you know, and he was a
Speaker 1: fly on the wall wherever he could be. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: the film never got released. Um, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: When the film was done, We're on the street and
Speaker 1: you're on the inside. Is they saw it and they
Speaker 1: said this cannot be released. It was not so much
Speaker 1: for the sex as much it was for drugs. There
Speaker 1: were and not one of the Stones, but other people
Speaker 1: were seen injecting drugs. Um, it was pretty raw, Bob.
Speaker 1: Um it may not be seen as so raw now, Um,
Speaker 1: but I wonder whether I know, you know, they they
Speaker 1: still have not shown it to anybody. It's a fantastic
Speaker 1: piece of film. I mean, Robert frank it's quite a filmmaker.
Speaker 1: M but it was pretty dark at times. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go to the tour. Whose idea is it to do
Speaker 1: the open pedal stage indoors? It's often these things are
Speaker 1: a combination of various people's input. You know, you mess around,
Speaker 1: you go to designers. But Robin Wagner, well again we
Speaker 1: went outside rock and roll. We went to Broadway. Um,
Speaker 1: Jules Fisher and Robin Wagner set designers guys who wont
Speaker 1: tones and we kind of it came out of those conversations.
Speaker 1: But a lot of it was a bit like on
Speaker 1: the back of pieces of paper, you know, sketches by
Speaker 1: Charlie or Mick or Keith giving off to a designer
Speaker 1: to see what he could come up with. Driven mostly
Speaker 1: by Mick. It was, you know, mostly by Mick. Um.
Speaker 1: But who had that original idea? God knows, I don't remember.
Speaker 1: You know, these tours take about a year to set up.
Speaker 1: Back in those days, Um, the industry didn't quite work
Speaker 1: as efficiently or smoothly as it as it does now. Um,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a lot more of a cottage industry.
Speaker 1: So um, the whole thing though, I think I'm trying
Speaker 1: to think of Chip was the lighting guy on that
Speaker 1: or whether he gone he imploded. I'm trying to think
Speaker 1: it was. I think the lighting essentially was designed by
Speaker 1: Jules Fisher. Okay, so uh, Now Mick Taylor wakes up
Speaker 1: one day he wants to leave the band. Eventually there
Speaker 1: are people are auditioned and Ronnie Wood gets the slot.
Speaker 1: Were you involved in that? No, I was not involved
Speaker 1: in would he being appointed? Uh, being offered the gig?
Speaker 1: If that's what you're asking, right, But let's go back
Speaker 1: a step. Did you foresee Mick Taylor leaving the band?
Speaker 1: He was he'd become a bit of a loner um,
Speaker 1: And there was some personality issues developed, I think in
Speaker 1: particular with Keith and him, uh, which wasn't a good
Speaker 1: thing as they were the two guitarists. Um. I think
Speaker 1: he wasn't enjoying it anymore. And he was a musical purist,
Speaker 1: I mean he really was. Um. I think he saw
Speaker 1: his role musically in the band decreasing. I think you
Speaker 1: know that the Stones were looking musically in rather more
Speaker 1: a different direction from his blues oriented kind of strength.
Speaker 1: He's not he's not a rhythmicity. He's not like Wood,
Speaker 1: he doesn't play that role. So but it was I
Speaker 1: wasn't surprised, boll not. I was not surprised at all.
Speaker 1: It wasn't surprised that Bill went. You know, they that
Speaker 1: you know, both of them were kind of the core
Speaker 1: of that band is McK keith and Charlie l is
Speaker 1: the one who speaks to everyone. There's always one in
Speaker 1: the band who speaks to everyone, but usually the drummer
Speaker 1: is the business guy. Yeah, not Charlie the you know
Speaker 1: that mixed the one who makes things happen. Keith was
Speaker 1: the one who could make things not happen. And that's
Speaker 1: a dinner. You know, it's a very imprecise science rock
Speaker 1: and roll is and that that, you know, the dynamic
Speaker 1: of a band is is quite amazing. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: worked with Roger Waters for many years, as you know
Speaker 1: I did, and you know I was up close and personally.
Speaker 1: It's funny, isn't if you take a look at it.
Speaker 1: I Mean, Jabber and Richards went through a period where
Speaker 1: they wouldn't talk to one another, made albums without ever
Speaker 1: meeting in the studio. Um, you've got the who Townsend
Speaker 1: adulters animosity and then is Well chronicled the Floyd with
Speaker 1: Gilmour and waters Well chronicled. I remember going to one
Speaker 1: gig at Nassau Colitey him where the caravans were turned
Speaker 1: in opposite directions so they would never have to see
Speaker 1: each other until they actually got on the stage. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you you know, and you've got um uh
Speaker 1: who page and plan the same thing. It's funny yet
Speaker 1: those bands of four of the biggest bands ever and
Speaker 1: you've got to find bands all of each other just
Speaker 1: die of boredom after one album uh something. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a unique blend, so unique cocktail rock
Speaker 1: and roll bands. So how do you decide to play
Speaker 1: stadiums in? Um? The demand was so overwhelming. The business
Speaker 1: had got to the stage where we could figure out
Speaker 1: where these states there weren't all stadiums. We could figure
Speaker 1: out where the good you know, we weren't the first
Speaker 1: in there there were. These promoters had now started to
Speaker 1: get this down. UM. It probably was driven to some
Speaker 1: extent by money, but it was a safe play. We
Speaker 1: knew that these facts, these stadiums could work. We knew
Speaker 1: that we could sell them out. That's what we weren't
Speaker 1: sure of in seventy two. Um, you know, and you
Speaker 1: know we'd we we kind of mixed and matched. We
Speaker 1: knew we've got to We've got a tour that we
Speaker 1: could extract data from which would tell us even and
Speaker 1: it's more in its medieval way back then that we
Speaker 1: were in pretty safe situation that we could play the JFK's,
Speaker 1: we could play the Arrowheads, we could play the Liberty
Speaker 1: Bowls or the Cotton Bowls. We knew what we were
Speaker 1: doing by then. We got it down and you know,
Speaker 1: to play in arenas, we we'd have had to play
Speaker 1: three or four nights in each arena, and just economically,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense. It just didn't make sense. It
Speaker 1: was I didn't mean to interrupt you, It didn't make
Speaker 1: sense of Princess Prince Rupert Lowers team. You know, he
Speaker 1: ultimately wrote a book before he died, but he was
Speaker 1: seen as a mysterious genius. Can you is that true?
Speaker 1: Can you? Reflected all on print Rooper Rupert had a
Speaker 1: unique relationship with the group, but Mick in particular he
Speaker 1: opened the doors for mix socially in London and Europe.
Speaker 1: Rupert didn't have a friend who didn't have a title. Um.
Speaker 1: And he he was a director of a very very
Speaker 1: prestigious bank, Leopold Joseph in the city of London. Um.
Speaker 1: He was a very clever man, very disarming, very good
Speaker 1: people's schools, very I mean typically I'm a lone still
Speaker 1: doesn't Sundbridge, but a British aristocrat. Um. He was very
Speaker 1: clever in advising Mike on money and the stones tag
Speaker 1: set up, which he's you know, was sophisticated, which many
Speaker 1: people including like now you two everybody is is in
Speaker 1: the same scheme, very legal, um. But um. He he
Speaker 1: kept himself very much a part for rock and roll,
Speaker 1: I mean rock and roll. It could have been anything
Speaker 1: for Rupert, you know, it didn't have to be music,
Speaker 1: but he he he worked Mick very well and Mick
Speaker 1: worked him very well. So you know when Princess Margaret
Speaker 1: happened to come to an Earl's Court show, it was
Speaker 1: Rupert was that she was Rupert's guest. Um. Often like
Speaker 1: Nancy Reagan and Jerry Zipkin would come to a show
Speaker 1: in l a Rupert's guest. Um. He kind of was
Speaker 1: that side of helped create that side of the rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: which Mick is a master at manipulating master, And it
Speaker 1: was very important to Mike, very important that status, that
Speaker 1: ability to to to associate and mix with the Hollywood elite,
Speaker 1: the social elite. Arm It also served that purpose in
Speaker 1: some ways for Mick. Um. It was Rupert and Mick
Speaker 1: and Rupert and arm It were very friendly and they would,
Speaker 1: you know, spend a lot of time together in the
Speaker 1: Mediterranean in the summer. So but Mick kind of worked
Speaker 1: them all extremely well. And he's Mick. He's one of
Speaker 1: a kind. He's quite unique as Mr Jagger. So how
Speaker 1: does it end with you in the stars, I think, Bob,
Speaker 1: it just after the biggest crisis in my life was
Speaker 1: the Lenin skin and plane crush. Okay, so it threw
Speaker 1: me completely under the bus. Um some ways. I I
Speaker 1: haven't recover of it from it. Um. I certainly haven't
Speaker 1: got closure on it. Um. And I kind of went
Speaker 1: off the rails and I think, you know, the stones felt.
Speaker 1: I've done three tours of America, three tours of Europe.
Speaker 1: Everything runs its course, you know, it's just all this
Speaker 1: business is as much about relationships. We all basically can
Speaker 1: do the same job. It's you know, we may color
Speaker 1: it a little differently. It may be you know, slightly tweaked,
Speaker 1: but essentially we you know, we were just fulfill of
Speaker 1: function and UM it run its course. Bob, Well did
Speaker 1: you look keep going? Did you leave good terms? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we left on good terms. Oh no, no, absolutely. UM.
Speaker 1: I always got on very well with with Mi. We
Speaker 1: went and watched a lot of cricket together, we vacationed together. UM.
Speaker 1: I had a lot of respect for him. Um, I'm Keith,
Speaker 1: you know, because in those days, Keith at certain lifestyle
Speaker 1: habits that you know, I as the manager or tour manager,
Speaker 1: you know, I had to try and combat the potential
Speaker 1: ramifications of We never really got close, but we've been
Speaker 1: closed since because Jane Rose as his manager, and Jane
Speaker 1: Rose worked for me and I introduced to the key,
Speaker 1: so she was one of my employees. Um when I
Speaker 1: was had my offices in New York. Um, so we've
Speaker 1: all kept pretty tight. Charlie is a lovely man. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm not in touch with Charlie, but if I saw him,
Speaker 1: there'd be a big hugs. Okay, So let's switch over
Speaker 1: to Leonard Skinner. How do you actually make the decision
Speaker 1: to manage them? As they say al Couprez sounds of
Speaker 1: the South, which is district out of it Land and
Speaker 1: distributed by m c A. But walk us through how
Speaker 1: you seal the deal and then what you do with Skinner. Well,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, we put them on UM as support
Speaker 1: for the WHO in that seventy three tour. And they
Speaker 1: were managers, you just said, by Alan Walden and represented
Speaker 1: by paragon Um, which was Alex Hodges and Terry Rhodes,
Speaker 1: so very much embedded in the South in Macon, Georgia,
Speaker 1: which was you know, the epicenter of Southern Rock. I
Speaker 1: just liked them, and they were not I thought they
Speaker 1: were phenomenal live Um. I thought Ronnie van Zandt, who
Speaker 1: could barely read or write, was one of the smartest
Speaker 1: guys I've ever ever met. His instincts were incredible. Um.
Speaker 1: He was bright as attack. And we got to know
Speaker 1: each other and they seemed to be Basically they asked me, Bob,
Speaker 1: I suppose if it comes down to it, would you
Speaker 1: like to managers? Remember at that time, you know, I
Speaker 1: was jacked the ladd in a way who stones blahih
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. They were a small band trying to
Speaker 1: break it. I obviously shown my belief in them by
Speaker 1: putting them on the hut or Um. They weren't getting
Speaker 1: on very well with with Alan Um. Phil was capit corner.
Speaker 1: They were on m c A. So there was no
Speaker 1: love lost between anyone in macon Um Alex and Terry,
Speaker 1: you know, they were okay um and it just it
Speaker 1: wasn't anything extraordinary. It was just one day, Ronnie said,
Speaker 1: I firing Alan Walden or we are will you manage
Speaker 1: just Limy Becaus called me the Limy and and that
Speaker 1: was it. That was a great relationship. I mean, I
Speaker 1: loved Leonard Skinner um and I feel very proud of
Speaker 1: what we accomplished together. I mean, a week after the
Speaker 1: plane crash, we were going to co headline Madison Square Garden,
Speaker 1: which right back in those days for a Southern man
Speaker 1: to be at that point was pretty incredible. One of
Speaker 1: the proudest moments of my life was I book Leonard
Speaker 1: skin and we book Leonard Skinner on the Stones ned Worth,
Speaker 1: oh in England. And I knew obviously what the stage
Speaker 1: was going to be and I knew the stage was
Speaker 1: going to be the tom and the tong was gonna
Speaker 1: you know, snake out into the audience. And so I
Speaker 1: got the three guitarists incredible because you had to have
Speaker 1: and then long guitar leads that they could march down
Speaker 1: that that that that that tom right into the middle
Speaker 1: of the audience. It upset Mick a bit because that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be saved there. But no one, no
Speaker 1: one thought that they could get down there because everything
Speaker 1: was like you know wide in those days, it wasn't
Speaker 1: and there was no wireless um. And they came down
Speaker 1: that ramp doing three give me three steps and it
Speaker 1: was one of the great rock and roll moment. I
Speaker 1: still visitized, and I remember McCarty sitting on the side saying, Wow,
Speaker 1: what a man, and you kind of like I was
Speaker 1: felt so proud, but that crash was just devastating, just
Speaker 1: just devastating for me personally, just and for them, I mean, god, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I've never had closure. I've never spoken to any
Speaker 1: of them since. There were lawsuits that followed, obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: which I understand I was sued, but it was all
Speaker 1: settled and there was no exchange of money. It was
Speaker 1: just you know, things against me weigh because it was
Speaker 1: all quite you know, it was handled properly, legally. The charter,
Speaker 1: I mean, the damn plane run out of gas. They
Speaker 1: had a faulty fuel gauge. That's what happened. That's what happened.
Speaker 1: And Ronnie van Zand being the cowboy that he was,
Speaker 1: you know, when the plane was coming down, they were
Speaker 1: looking for a clearing. He said, I'm going up with
Speaker 1: my pilots. You know, they the stay at the back
Speaker 1: of the plane. He lived as he may have been,
Speaker 1: you know, physically impaired, God forbid, but everyone in the
Speaker 1: back of the plane survived. He goes, walks up and
Speaker 1: puts his arm around the two pilots. You know, that's Ronnick,
Speaker 1: you know, stair awaiting whatever. Uh, pretty sobering. How did
Speaker 1: how did you find out? Well, it's very interesting. We'd
Speaker 1: opened the tour at the sports a Toorium, probably the
Speaker 1: worst venue ever in Miami, Florida. And the next day
Speaker 1: we played Asheville, North Carolina, and from Nashville, North Carolina,
Speaker 1: the band were to fly to Baton Rouge. We're going
Speaker 1: to shoot a video that the and they we're going
Speaker 1: to play Baton Rouge. I was in Miami. I was
Speaker 1: on the plane the charge of playing. We flew into Asheville,
Speaker 1: North Carolina. I was at the gig. Next day we
Speaker 1: were ready to go to Baton Rouge. I was kind
Speaker 1: of on the plane. I get a phone call. One
Speaker 1: of my non music specific ventures that I got involved
Speaker 1: with was a soccer team in the NFL. I was
Speaker 1: one of a group of music business people Jerry Moss,
Speaker 1: Terry Right, Terry Ellis, Frank Barcelona Di, Anthony, Peter Frampton,
Speaker 1: Paul Simon who applied for the Philadelphia franchise the Philadelphia Fury.
Speaker 1: I was because I was English. I was on kind
Speaker 1: of the management committee. And I got a call just
Speaker 1: before the flight was supposed to take off for Baton
Speaker 1: Rouge that I was urgently required in New York City
Speaker 1: because the NSL Commissioner was going to hear our, you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully approve our application for the franchise in Philadelphia. I
Speaker 1: got off the plane. I jumped on an Eastern Airlines
Speaker 1: flight into La Guardia Airport. I got off the plane
Speaker 1: and I'm walking up the gangway and um, I see
Speaker 1: at the end my attorney I know my back uh,
Speaker 1: and Skinner's attorney and my number two Mary Beth Medley,
Speaker 1: who worked for me in the office, and I said,
Speaker 1: what are you doing here? Why do you come to
Speaker 1: the headport to meet me? And they told me, uh
Speaker 1: and uh, that's on you, okay, the way the way
Speaker 1: you tell the story since you were on the plane,
Speaker 1: and it off any survivors guilt, Yeah, a little, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bob, A little depends what mood of dime
Speaker 1: in the day it is and when it is. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm very, very very mixed emotions about the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Of course, so you say, and understandably it put you
Speaker 1: into a tail spin and you'd finished the Stones tour
Speaker 1: needles to say, this was the end of the Skinner tour?
Speaker 1: Where did that leave you personally? Personally, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be in the music business. I wanted out m Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I had no appetite UM, and I let
Speaker 1: things go drunk too much, took too many drugs, um,
Speaker 1: just lost track of life. I then I pulled myself
Speaker 1: together and a great friend of mine, Joe Cohen, who
Speaker 1: was running Madison Square Garden at the time, had just
Speaker 1: started up his cable television network Madison's MSG TV, and
Speaker 1: a relationship that I had made through through the Stones
Speaker 1: really was with Warholes Factory, and I was very friendly
Speaker 1: with them all, in particular Vincent Fremont, who ran it,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of got involved with producing television shows,
Speaker 1: one of which was the Andy Warhole TV Show and
Speaker 1: Andy hosted and don't many people know this a TV show?
Speaker 1: We did six episodes of it. I've got them all
Speaker 1: off old cassettes in my garage and I did that
Speaker 1: and I messed around with that for a while, but
Speaker 1: it did, it didn't. The drug wasn't powerful enough. I
Speaker 1: missed music. I I I the appetite started to come back,
Speaker 1: and you know, but I was out of touch, you know,
Speaker 1: you know this business miss a day and everyone forgets
Speaker 1: your phone number. So um. But then one day out
Speaker 1: of the blue, I get a call from Roger Waters,
Speaker 1: um partner who had known for years. Um. I first
Speaker 1: met her when she was David Entos from his girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the first isle of White Festival, and Roger asked it,
Speaker 1: and I'd know I'd met him before through a roar
Speaker 1: kind of We were friends. The Floyd Camp and I
Speaker 1: were friends. I knew them all because I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I would be very interested if you come and manage me. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, right, this could be a lifeline. Back in
Speaker 1: um Roger had left the Floyd. His partner Caroline had
Speaker 1: turned round to him in bed one day and said, Roger,
Speaker 1: you should leave without you there is no Pink Floyd.
Speaker 1: Um uh. And then I looked. That taught us all
Speaker 1: about the power of a brand. But I managed Roger.
Speaker 1: It was pretty tough because there was a lot of
Speaker 1: litigation going on over who owned what obviously, in particular
Speaker 1: who owned the name now. Then the business manager for
Speaker 1: the Pink Floyd, who are Rock and the band had
Speaker 1: hired was Rupert Lonstein. So I had a pretty good
Speaker 1: relationship with Rupert, which helped. I had a very long
Speaker 1: standing relationship with Stepho and I've always been very good
Speaker 1: friends with Dave Gilmour from the days at Cambridge and
Speaker 1: we actually share the same birthday. So I mean I
Speaker 1: was stuck in the middle. I've got Roger over here
Speaker 1: and I got you know, the Floyd guys over there,
Speaker 1: and I kind of we got stuck. I got, you know,
Speaker 1: we got through some sort of negotiation whereby Roger couldn't
Speaker 1: do the Wall and its entirety, but he could do
Speaker 1: x amount of songs as long as they weren't altogether,
Speaker 1: and the Floyd could do this. Bottom line is we
Speaker 1: both decided to tour. Roger Waters put on an album
Speaker 1: called Radio Chaos. You may remember it or may not.
Speaker 1: Jim Ladd came out, played the disc jockey, brilliant show,
Speaker 1: great you know, great production fantas Nick Pink Floyd went
Speaker 1: out the same time. No Roger Waters um so first
Speaker 1: dates go up Toronto, Roger's playing maple Leaf, Pink Floyder
Speaker 1: on sale across the road at the Baseball Staying whatever.
Speaker 1: Roger thousand tickets, Pink Floyd thirty tickets. And so it
Speaker 1: was around America. And it was the most difficult, most depressing,
Speaker 1: most awful thing to have to man get through with him.
Speaker 1: His ego was crushed. We realized that you can't you know,
Speaker 1: the Floyd were the first real brand when none of
Speaker 1: the individuals meant more than the combination. And we got
Speaker 1: I mean, we got through it. But it was not
Speaker 1: a pleasant experience. Um and but he gave me my
Speaker 1: foothold back into music and then Bills this black put
Speaker 1: me together with Duran Duran and I started to manage
Speaker 1: them and this is all in the eighties, um, and
Speaker 1: that you know, that went okay. But we put out
Speaker 1: an album. It was a dog called Liberty. Um. We
Speaker 1: did the greatest hits, which did well. And then they
Speaker 1: wrote this song called Ordinary World. And I took that
Speaker 1: song around everyone I knew in the industry and said,
Speaker 1: Duran durand new song. Roger Aimeson, forget it, Peter, you
Speaker 1: know Duran durannor over And that's what I got everywhere Duran.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't Dran Duran, it would be fine. And
Speaker 1: I just sat with the guys and I said, I
Speaker 1: can't do this anymore. Guys, It's just you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm just getting knocked back. And you know, if you
Speaker 1: can't convince the sellers, you'll they will never convince the customers.
Speaker 1: So um it did. The rest is history. Alan Kovac
Speaker 1: picked it up and it was the record or the
Speaker 1: song that obviously launched the second half of their career. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: I mean very good friends. I have a lot of
Speaker 1: respect for Duran Duran and Nick Rhodes. They could have
Speaker 1: easily gone under. They are the first major pop and
Speaker 1: that really survived in many respects before we got to
Speaker 1: the Backstreet Boys, and but they were very much a
Speaker 1: singles band and not seen as a legitimate rock band.
Speaker 1: UM and of course you know they were the first
Speaker 1: video band, the first glam band. Boy or boy have
Speaker 1: they done well? I mean they were going to headline
Speaker 1: Isle of Wight this summer, going to headline Hyde Park
Speaker 1: this summer. A lot of respect for how they've done it. UM,
Speaker 1: So you walk away? I think that's nine two ordinary
Speaker 1: world could be ninety? Are you walk just about? You
Speaker 1: walk away from Duran? Duran? What's your next move? Next
Speaker 1: move is that I'm living in America back and I'm
Speaker 1: sending some time in America. And um Phonogram or Mercury
Speaker 1: UK say, there's this great band we've got called James.
Speaker 1: UM we think they can break them America. Would you
Speaker 1: help us out? So I became co manager of James
Speaker 1: with their existing manager Martin, who was the singer's girlfriend.
Speaker 1: And this was just pre laid and um lay did
Speaker 1: phenomenally well. UM James were always a great life band
Speaker 1: and we really I think at one point we shipped
Speaker 1: platinum in America. UM of the album UM and this
Speaker 1: is before it got picked up in the American buy movies. Um,
Speaker 1: and if we really did well Martin, the band fell
Speaker 1: out with and I became the sole manager of them.
Speaker 1: And it's a band that didn't make a lot of
Speaker 1: money back in the day, had a lot of problems.
Speaker 1: They're very dysfunctional, but their true mus I was seven
Speaker 1: of them. Um. How they've survived is a test for
Speaker 1: me to live. They're a great life man. They've never
Speaker 1: been a fashionable band, but they've been very respectful of
Speaker 1: their fans, very you know, in every respect. They have
Speaker 1: a great connection. They do not allow any gouging of
Speaker 1: the fans or abusing and they're selling more tickets right
Speaker 1: now than they've ever sold. We have a tour next
Speaker 1: year in arenas you know, oh to Manchester Arena. Primarily
Speaker 1: one market to two or three markets actually. But I've
Speaker 1: managed them for thirty years, Bob. They're like my kids,
Speaker 1: you know. And every time I've told Tim Booth, the singer,
Speaker 1: to go right, he's got left and he's often he's
Speaker 1: beaten me there, um, you know. And they haven't had
Speaker 1: the biggest career of anyone in the world, but they've
Speaker 1: had a great career and that their shows are fantastic.
Speaker 1: They just I still love going and standing in the
Speaker 1: audience and watching them. I must have seen them five times,
Speaker 1: and that it just gives me energy. I love them.
Speaker 1: We're you know, I love their music, I love everything.
Speaker 1: And they allow me to manage them. And I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the problems I've had in my career
Speaker 1: is I don't have a lot of patients. Um I
Speaker 1: need to know that my role in an artist or
Speaker 1: a client's career is respected and and and the lines
Speaker 1: are divided, and when the artist starts telling me how
Speaker 1: to manage the artist, it's kind of over there. I
Speaker 1: don't care about any contract. It's like relationships, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: you know when it's over. I mean, I've managed a
Speaker 1: lot of that madness. I've managed this one. I managed that,
Speaker 1: And I'd rather walk. I'd rather just go because I
Speaker 1: don't want to be there. If I don't believe that
Speaker 1: something's right, I'd rather walk. I think I think managers
Speaker 1: get a raw deal actually, in terms of of of
Speaker 1: how they're compensated. For instance, there's there's a situation where
Speaker 1: you know, by the complete accident, there's everything we've mentioned
Speaker 1: so far has basically been rock and roll or contemporary.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the next Foo Fighters, the next Leonard Skinner,
Speaker 1: the next Stones whatever. And suddenly I get hit on
Speaker 1: the back of the head by someone called Il Divo,
Speaker 1: and and and and Columbia and Stringer and everybody said,
Speaker 1: come on, you can manage, you'll deva, You'll be really
Speaker 1: good at doing all that. And I said, oh, come on,
Speaker 1: this is everything that I got in the business to get.
Speaker 1: You know, I detest and I heard the song there,
Speaker 1: you know, their operatic version of Umbrake my heart. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: this has got something. I can get on board with this.
Speaker 1: And I got on board. I gone on board with it.
Speaker 1: These are four guys who were casts rather like a movie,
Speaker 1: beautiful voices, handsome, you know, everything you need. It was
Speaker 1: Chippen Dail's with voices. And then they got to the
Speaker 1: point where they were telling me they wanted to write
Speaker 1: their own albums, do their solo albums, and this and that,
Speaker 1: and I just said, no, you know that's not it's
Speaker 1: a train wreck. I promise you you don't do it.
Speaker 1: It's a trainer. You've got something that really works, you've
Speaker 1: got a brand, you've got to you've got a fan
Speaker 1: base that are so loyal to you. You've got, whether
Speaker 1: you like him or not, Simon Cowell adds a great
Speaker 1: deal of value to you, and it's he hasn't He
Speaker 1: has a lot of leverage within the Sony hierarchy, and
Speaker 1: he's your champion. He may disagree with him about certain
Speaker 1: repertoire choices or certain mixes. Get over it, guys. You've
Speaker 1: you've made millions, millions, You've sold thirty five million albums, um.
Speaker 1: But they couldn't, you know, the ego took over this.
Speaker 1: So we've been you know, and you walk away from it.
Speaker 1: And then with with Ball and Bow, I took on.
Speaker 1: After that, I became known as the kind of guy
Speaker 1: who knows how to do these classical crossover things. So
Speaker 1: I started to manage a guy called Alfie Bow who
Speaker 1: uh you know, came through, Uh, came to everyone's attention.
Speaker 1: He was in Lemits, fantastic voice, lovely guy working last night.
Speaker 1: So I am, but his career was in the weeds.
Speaker 1: He released an album which was unsuccessful. He released another
Speaker 1: album under my stewardship, which was so so, but not
Speaker 1: what it was needed in that kind of field. So
Speaker 1: I came up with the idea with Phil boundary of
Speaker 1: creating UH an entity called Ball and Bow. Michael Ball
Speaker 1: is a well known West End performer, host TV shows,
Speaker 1: very got his own radio show on Radio two. Alph is,
Speaker 1: I thought, right, one on one makes three, let's go.
Speaker 1: I've always believed that if you get it at one
Speaker 1: on one makes three. Um, so we put it together.
Speaker 1: Um number one record, biggest selling album of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eighteen in Britain, selling out O two, selling out
Speaker 1: all over the place. Alph. He wants to do a
Speaker 1: solo album and he doesn't like kind of this crossover.
Speaker 1: He wants to do a blues arm or He's not
Speaker 1: quite sure, but he wants to do an album that
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the genre of music that
Speaker 1: he's known for. And he said, so, I said, I'll
Speaker 1: walk away from it. Then, you know, we we sit
Speaker 1: down and we start to negotiate with the lawyer and
Speaker 1: what we call the post term Commission. And I said,
Speaker 1: I think I should You got it, Bob, You've got it.
Speaker 1: I said, I think I should have a consideration on
Speaker 1: board and both I created or was instrumental with Phil
Speaker 1: Baodry Michael's marriage in creating that intellectual property, and I
Speaker 1: should be compensated if I if I was the producer
Speaker 1: of the record, I'd get an override for my three
Speaker 1: or four points. I said, why don't managers? And it's
Speaker 1: the thing that's bummed me a lot that I feel that.
Speaker 1: You know, management is a monst name. I love it
Speaker 1: because it's the only thing I've really ever done. The
Speaker 1: lows are devastating, but the highs are phenomenal. But I
Speaker 1: do think that we should have you know, normally that
Speaker 1: the lawyers just cut you off after three months, three years, whatever.
Speaker 1: But I think we should have a continuing interest in
Speaker 1: things of that nature when we launched them. Um, because
Speaker 1: intellectual properties, god knows. I mean, look at those struggling
Speaker 1: photographers we used to let backstage back in the seventies
Speaker 1: and eighties. They've now got their photographs exhibited in the
Speaker 1: tape Museum. You know what, what what do we give them?
Speaker 1: We gave him a PhotoPass, we got nothing. Um, So
Speaker 1: intellectual property is many respects the name of the game,
Speaker 1: and managers get short. I believe in that respect, I
Speaker 1: do believe managers the management contract should be re calibrated
Speaker 1: to acknowledge those types of things. Okay, but let's uh
Speaker 1: forgetting this COVID era where everything's up in the air. Uh.
Speaker 1: Live Nation first calls SFX THNK, Well clear channel is
Speaker 1: rolled up. Starting in the frank Barcelona model starts to
Speaker 1: die and then goes completely under. We have mass management
Speaker 1: companies over at Live Nation in red light. What and
Speaker 1: the businesses mature as opposed to the era you're talking
Speaker 1: about where we were making it up and figuring it out.
Speaker 1: What's your viewpoint on today's business? Oh boy, that's a
Speaker 1: big question. Um. I don't enjoy it obviously like I did,
Speaker 1: But then I'm seventy four, so i'm I am you
Speaker 1: know everything that I got in the business during place.
Speaker 1: Um uh an old white man. I think it works
Speaker 1: obviously far more efficiently. I think it is far less
Speaker 1: spiritual is the wrong word, but it's far more clinical. Um.
Speaker 1: I believe that the star making machine is so contrived
Speaker 1: right now it's um, it's it's unhealthy. Um. I mean
Speaker 1: Colonel Tom pork Parker made Presley as a star. But
Speaker 1: what we're doing now with where the visual is sometimes
Speaker 1: more important than the audio, does bother me. I always
Speaker 1: think that Live is healthier, but I think it's now
Speaker 1: oversubscribed as it's become the primary income stream. UM Live
Speaker 1: Nation is nothing but a roll up of those Larry
Speaker 1: Maggot's Don Laws, Brian Murphers. It's the same guys with
Speaker 1: a corporate cloak and a very astute, astute guy in charge.
Speaker 1: Michael Rappino was some very able assistance. Cathy Willard, Joe
Speaker 1: um and co. Arthur Friedman is still there doing his stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, as I've said before in things, and I
Speaker 1: think you've commented on it. You know, I've known these
Speaker 1: promoters same Delsoner all my life in New York. He
Speaker 1: did the first show I ever did in New York
Speaker 1: after the met at Forest Hills. In that time, I've
Speaker 1: met thirty or come across the dirty presidents of Columbia
Speaker 1: Records or Atlantic Records or things like that. UM, I
Speaker 1: don't like I'm involved with the project now. As one
Speaker 1: project of last year, I decided basically I'm gonna like
Speaker 1: kind of kind of step out a little bit. I
Speaker 1: was I'm tired, okay, And I got rid of Alfie
Speaker 1: Bow and I stayed with James because I'll always stay
Speaker 1: with James. Another kid who you know, Stephen Wilson because
Speaker 1: I like him because he's got his own lane, he
Speaker 1: does his own thing. He you know, he's got this
Speaker 1: great relation to it. I just loved the kid and
Speaker 1: what he what he does. And I signed an unknown girl, uh,
Speaker 1: completely unknown. She was a cover's girl. She was signed,
Speaker 1: but she was signed to Atlantic when she was thirteen.
Speaker 1: She's now nineteen and they're going to release her first
Speaker 1: real record in two weeks time. And it's it was
Speaker 1: al really, I thought, stirring example of artist development as
Speaker 1: opposed to product placement. UM. And I'm enjoying it. It's
Speaker 1: kind of it's like going to the first dance again.
Speaker 1: I'm loving it, UM, but I find it so soulless, Bob.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really soulless UM. And you know they're
Speaker 1: looking at nothing kind of impresses them. They sit there
Speaker 1: like looking at numbers and looking at Gator social media influences,
Speaker 1: and I get all that, and influencers are important. We
Speaker 1: had our own thing of did the similar thing. I
Speaker 1: get it, I get brands, and I get planned social media.
Speaker 1: We're all still trying to do the same thing that
Speaker 1: we did years ago. It's not it's the same game,
Speaker 1: but it's too big. This The mediocrity at middle management
Speaker 1: is appalling, and I mean, I don't have to tell
Speaker 1: you know, I'm preaching to the church here. And top
Speaker 1: management is just so removed from the day to day
Speaker 1: culture of the music business now that I just I
Speaker 1: think they've squeezed the entrepreneurs out of the business because
Speaker 1: they're so risk adverse. Because corporations should not be in
Speaker 1: the music business. They just shouldn't. I mean, what are
Speaker 1: Vivendi doing running a record company, I you know, other
Speaker 1: than to make money to sell it no other reason. Um.
Speaker 1: I think Lucien, given the cards he's been dealt, whether
Speaker 1: it's done, a fantastic job. But I think the whole
Speaker 1: model is broken. Just like I feel the political system
Speaker 1: is broken, I think the music businesses system structure is broken.
Speaker 1: There was one meeting that I've broken about ten years ago,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe less. I managed to get Michael Rappino and
Speaker 1: Lucien Grange in the same room and I said, you
Speaker 1: guys are in the same business. You should join forces
Speaker 1: for the betterment of your artists and the business. And
Speaker 1: my suggestion was I said both. I said, I said, Michael,
Speaker 1: you just take bands for one night stance. We all
Speaker 1: know that it's a cash business. You win big, you
Speaker 1: lose big, but it's you know, you've got no really
Speaker 1: will stake in the game. You Lucy and signed a
Speaker 1: band for seven albums, eight albums when they start. If
Speaker 1: they're successful, they spend the rest of their career negotiating
Speaker 1: that contract. If they're unsuccessful. Nowadays you're drop them after
Speaker 1: one album, or you're you're dropping after the first midweek. Okay,
Speaker 1: I said, but why don't you get your heads together?
Speaker 1: And I think that you Live Nation should get three
Speaker 1: points on any artist or developed artists that you and
Speaker 1: Universal agree on, and three points on their next record,
Speaker 1: and you should guarantee the label that you will give
Speaker 1: them thirty forty dates in the US. And so there's
Speaker 1: some more scientific, more strategic play, and you both get
Speaker 1: reports and you've Universal will get money from the gigs
Speaker 1: in kind in a similar in kind to the to
Speaker 1: the points that Live Nation will get on the record
Speaker 1: of the part. I just feel that, you know, we've
Speaker 1: just got to close ranks on all this. Why we've
Speaker 1: got all these silos around which are running this bit
Speaker 1: the business at the moment, I don't get it, Bob.
Speaker 1: It doesn't to me. It's not working long term and
Speaker 1: artists development as you well know. I mean, it's like
Speaker 1: the checks in the mail, isn't it. It's just not
Speaker 1: it's not there. Um, So I can't say that I
Speaker 1: think it's wonderful, but it never was wonderful, you know.
Speaker 1: And when you've got something successful and you kind of
Speaker 1: think it's great, and when something is unsuccessful you blame everybody.
Speaker 1: But I've always felt that if you've got a hit,
Speaker 1: you stand out of the way, you just open the door.
Speaker 1: And as a manager, all I can do is it
Speaker 1: the six doors, and my artists has to go through one.
Speaker 1: I point to the door that I think will serve
Speaker 1: my arts is best in going through, and on the
Speaker 1: other side there's something meaningful for him. Um. I think
Speaker 1: the lawyers are far too involved with this. I think
Speaker 1: they've become there and our dives often their first advice
Speaker 1: to an artists, don't take an up manager because you
Speaker 1: won't have to pay a commission on the on the
Speaker 1: album or the publishing deal. Well that's kind of like
Speaker 1: self defeat and it's stupid because a then no manager
Speaker 1: wants to work, should work for two years for no
Speaker 1: money at all. And I know that the lawyers will say, well,
Speaker 1: I can charge you fifteen thousand pounds fifteen dollars to
Speaker 1: do this contract, but whereas you have to pay a manager,
Speaker 1: and I'll cost you more. No lawyer actually ever has
Speaker 1: to live with the contracts they negotiate. Most of those
Speaker 1: contracts are about, as you know, forty pages long, all
Speaker 1: all obviously crafted for the event, for for when things
Speaker 1: go wrong. It's just not right that they have such
Speaker 1: a say so early in an artist's career. Now that's
Speaker 1: not all the case because management now, but more and
Speaker 1: more the lawyers of players in there live the thickest
Speaker 1: contract live. Even if you do a over tour with
Speaker 1: Live Nation that ten pages, often two pages, and it's
Speaker 1: a lot more money at stake, a lot more. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: it's a different it's a different culture, it's a different DNA.
Speaker 1: So I just think that you know, we've got three
Speaker 1: record companies now, Bob, and that's not healthy. I just
Speaker 1: don't think that's healthy. A and M's brought folded revived.
Speaker 1: When they need to offer some new guy or poach
Speaker 1: some guy from another label, Oh, let's give him A
Speaker 1: and M oh, let's get in you know, let's let's all,
Speaker 1: let's bring him my records back. Oh, let's bring it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just such a game though in that sense,
Speaker 1: um I am. I don't know when that's answered your question,
Speaker 1: but oh, I think it's more than to answer a question.
Speaker 1: The problem is people who were not alive in that
Speaker 1: era are not conscious. They don't realize. As you stated earlier,
Speaker 1: I mean that the business was being built. I used
Speaker 1: the equivalent thing from tech. You know, there's always things changing.
Speaker 1: It's not that way now. I think music will always exist.
Speaker 1: There are some changes coming down the pike. We could
Speaker 1: we could have a long discussion about this, but this
Speaker 1: is your time. We'll do that at another time. Peter,
Speaker 1: this has been wonderful. Thanks so much for showing up.
Speaker 1: I hope so, I hope you're enjoying it. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: really really great. Really, you're fantastic. Until next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left sense