Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left's podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today it's Dave, Robin's photographer, me anager co FOUNDERSTFF Records. Dave,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the podcast, Bob. It's great to be here. Okay, Dave,
Speaker 1: you started out as a photographer. I started my career
Speaker 1: as a photographer in Dublin, Ireland and did a lot
Speaker 1: of different photographs of various magazines. But eventually I've finished
Speaker 1: up taking photographs of poor musicians who had no money
Speaker 1: but who needed photographs, and I dug out my wide
Speaker 1: angle lens and started taking pictures of bands. How did
Speaker 1: you learn how to shoot photos? An old friend of
Speaker 1: my father's who showed me pretty much how it worked,
Speaker 1: and I practiced on a load of children and people
Speaker 1: in Irish pubs, which is uh is an education in itself.
Speaker 1: And at what age did you start? I started at
Speaker 1: about sixteen sixteen, Okay. What kind of family did you
Speaker 1: grow up and what did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 1: My father was a signwriter, my mother was a housewife
Speaker 1: and it was a very normal Irish Catholic family, two sisters,
Speaker 1: and the only difference was my father decided that he
Speaker 1: could afford to send me to boarding school. So that
Speaker 1: was the difference between me and all my peers at
Speaker 1: the time. So where are you in the hierarchy of
Speaker 1: the three kids. I'm in the middle. And you went
Speaker 1: to boarding school at what age? What was that experience like?
Speaker 1: I went to boarding school when I was six six six,
Speaker 1: and that was a novel experience. Obviously it's the only
Speaker 1: one I had, so I didn't have a way to
Speaker 1: compare it. But Ireland, as you can imagine, in early
Speaker 1: years Catholic nuns to begin with, until I was eleven,
Speaker 1: and then from eleven I went to secondary school and
Speaker 1: I had the priest to look after me. Obviously, they've
Speaker 1: had a bad press, inevitably, and I thought I can
Speaker 1: say about them, but I had no problems, and I
Speaker 1: was a very experienced born in school boy, so I
Speaker 1: knew what was happening and that I could avoid stuff
Speaker 1: and help my friends to avoid things that were going on.
Speaker 1: The Irish priests have had a terrible battering, quite rightly,
Speaker 1: and it's not obviously an area where in the music
Speaker 1: business you you think about. But it was a very
Speaker 1: good education. It was a very good from the academic
Speaker 1: point of view. It was an excellent education, and it's
Speaker 1: been the kind of confidence of my life to be
Speaker 1: able to use that education to my advantage. Who usually
Speaker 1: boarding school kids go to university, What about you? I
Speaker 1: didn't because I'd had enough for boarding school. When I
Speaker 1: got to seventeen, there was a The school I went
Speaker 1: to was a very big rugby college. The rugby was
Speaker 1: was a huge impetus to that school. And I played
Speaker 1: on the rugby team and I was good, I think,
Speaker 1: and uh it moved mountains, you know. I got a
Speaker 1: very good status into school for being on the team.
Speaker 1: But I fell out with the coach for various behavioral
Speaker 1: reasons and decided that there wasn't a future in me
Speaker 1: finishing the last two years before I might go to university.
Speaker 1: But my father, in any event, had told me that
Speaker 1: he had spent um, he'd spent money on my education,
Speaker 1: but it was unlikely to be able to afford to
Speaker 1: send me to university. He thought a should get a job.
Speaker 1: But you skipped the last two years of what we
Speaker 1: call high school or secondary school. That's right, that's right. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you stopped going to school. What do you do? Well?
Speaker 1: You get a job as a photographer in my In
Speaker 1: my case, I had a hobby for photography, and I
Speaker 1: wondered whether I could make a living at it, whether
Speaker 1: I could please my father that I would have a
Speaker 1: living and that I could show him what I could do.
Speaker 1: So I went and took pictures of everything that moved
Speaker 1: and eventually got a very good living and moved to
Speaker 1: England when I was eighteen to be a beach photographer
Speaker 1: for a company which is very well known called but Lands,
Speaker 1: which is a holiday camp type environment, and I was
Speaker 1: a beach photographer, also called a smudger. A smudger is
Speaker 1: a beach photographer who takes pictures of people, gets money
Speaker 1: off them, and they don't get the pictures till the
Speaker 1: following day. So it's it's an art in itself. Why
Speaker 1: is it called smudger, I'm not entirely sure. I think
Speaker 1: because you're not great, because you smudge it, you blur it.
Speaker 1: You're not you're not a you know, a fashion photographer
Speaker 1: or whatever else. I think it's a slightly derogatory term.
Speaker 1: So you're a beach photographer to holiday camp. Holiday camps
Speaker 1: don't have a good reputation since Tommy and the reference there. However,
Speaker 1: at a young age. One would think it was fun.
Speaker 1: But when you work in a place like that in
Speaker 1: the United States, you can have an existence, You can
Speaker 1: have fun, but you really can only keep your head
Speaker 1: barely above water. So was this something to kill time
Speaker 1: or were you making any money? I was making money
Speaker 1: because I got a commission from the photography that I did.
Speaker 1: In other words, I got a commission for everybody who
Speaker 1: paid to have their photograph the following day, So you
Speaker 1: could make a lot by working very hard. It was
Speaker 1: definitely um income from work. H view an example of
Speaker 1: something that that I was just a young guy from Ireland.
Speaker 1: I should have been nineteen. They only took nineteen year old,
Speaker 1: so I was having to lower my voice and try
Speaker 1: and be try and be good. Um. But a lady,
Speaker 1: a middle aged lady, kept coming back to me for photographs,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was because I'm so good at
Speaker 1: what I did. It turned out that her husband was
Speaker 1: a wrestler who worked at the camp, and he told
Speaker 1: me he would kill me if I took another picture
Speaker 1: of his wife, so I had to jump into the
Speaker 1: bushes every time this woman came by. She obviously figured
Speaker 1: I was a good looking Irish lad, but it was
Speaker 1: very dangerous. So I made good income for a season
Speaker 1: by the seaside in England at a at a holiday
Speaker 1: camp which had a high proportion of young unaccompanied females,
Speaker 1: And so it was a revelation to me in a
Speaker 1: lot of different ways. Ireland is very um, you know, conservative.
Speaker 1: So one good thing about it, Bob, was that I
Speaker 1: met a lot of other photographers who did the season
Speaker 1: at the camp. So they would just come down for
Speaker 1: the three months, three or four months, and a lot
Speaker 1: of them had contacts with agencies and other magazines photography wise,
Speaker 1: So I'm I networked quite a lot of very good
Speaker 1: jobs out of that particular um situation. So how did
Speaker 1: you get from there into music? From there, I worked
Speaker 1: for a couple of agencies. I was introduced to a
Speaker 1: couple of agencies which would use a photographer like a
Speaker 1: freelance operator. In other words, they would send me on
Speaker 1: a job, they would tell me what they wanted out
Speaker 1: of it. Their main interest in life was to make
Speaker 1: sure that they had the correct names left to right
Speaker 1: was one of their main features. And by my point
Speaker 1: of it was good because I didn't have to I
Speaker 1: didn't have to develop the film. I just sent it
Speaker 1: back to them and they used it as they wish,
Speaker 1: and I got a paid pair job and that could
Speaker 1: be quite that, it could be quite a good week. Um.
Speaker 1: As it happened, I worked for several magazines, music magazines
Speaker 1: that they obviously were attached to, and Pop magazine and
Speaker 1: the Rave magazine. I ended up doing pictures of quite
Speaker 1: a lot of the up and coming musicians on the
Speaker 1: British scene. Is that how you ended up shooting the Beatles? Yes,
Speaker 1: it is, Yeah I did. I did a job where
Speaker 1: I went to Liverpool to film twelve groups for for
Speaker 1: some situation they had, and I ended up filming the
Speaker 1: Beatles that lunchtime in the cavern without really realizing how
Speaker 1: wonderful that was. Most of the bands were playing I did,
Speaker 1: I've shots and most of them, and most of them
Speaker 1: were playing the same song. So you had a situation
Speaker 1: where they were playing a lot of Louisiana tracks and
Speaker 1: most of the band, including the Beatles, played long Tall
Speaker 1: Sally for example. I think about sick of them play
Speaker 1: that song and several other covers that they were all
Speaker 1: involved in. So the scene in Liverpool was was musically
Speaker 1: a kind of Louisiana rhythm and blues area, and I
Speaker 1: don't remember the Beatles being that much better. I do
Speaker 1: remember Paul McCartney only insofar as he was very friendly.
Speaker 1: He was very chatty. He he knew a photographer was
Speaker 1: going to be useful. John Lennon was pretty nondescript. He
Speaker 1: didn't relate to me in any way. Paul did chat
Speaker 1: me up, and subsequently, over my career I have met
Speaker 1: him several times and we have a relationship. So so
Speaker 1: it wasn't because of that time. It was something we
Speaker 1: could go back to and remind each other that we
Speaker 1: had connected at that time. Okay, so you're being a
Speaker 1: freelance guy, you're shooting these jobs. How do you move
Speaker 1: on beyond photography? Well, I went back to Ireland to
Speaker 1: show off to my parents that I was a happening
Speaker 1: event I had. There was a there was a tailor
Speaker 1: in London called sam Arcus, and sam Arcus was the
Speaker 1: Hippus Taylor in London. So as I went to Sam
Speaker 1: and had him make two suits for me before I
Speaker 1: went back to impress my parents with the whole idea.
Speaker 1: I got back to UH. I got back to Dublin
Speaker 1: and there was a space music Congress going on. And
Speaker 1: my agency said, could you cover it even though you're
Speaker 1: on holiday, could you go in and cover that because
Speaker 1: we're short. Uh. That space medicine was a very early
Speaker 1: part of the space program. And I got on very
Speaker 1: well with the American guy eyes doctors who had me
Speaker 1: film all the Russians, and I got on very well
Speaker 1: with the Russians who had me film all the American
Speaker 1: so so so I did very well out of that
Speaker 1: A week a week's conference in Dublin, and I started
Speaker 1: to get a lot of Irish work, and because I
Speaker 1: had come from London, which in those days very impressive
Speaker 1: to Irish people, I was. I quickly got into the
Speaker 1: top layer of photography in Dublin. I also had a
Speaker 1: motorized camera, which the Irish had not actually discovered. So
Speaker 1: the the the Union complained about me because I was
Speaker 1: using this camera and taking more pictures than anybody else.
Speaker 1: But that's a that's another story. So I became quite
Speaker 1: a good photographer in Dublin. I made quite a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and I decided to open a club because
Speaker 1: Dublin did not have any kind of beat club like
Speaker 1: London had. The Two Eyes and the Marquee and various
Speaker 1: other things like that. I opened the club in Dublin,
Speaker 1: and of course through the door came loads of groups
Speaker 1: whose equipment didn't work, who just like you and I
Speaker 1: early on in this interview where nothing worked too well,
Speaker 1: and so uh in through my door came Van Morrison
Speaker 1: one day when he it turned out he had got
Speaker 1: rid of his manager, Phil Solomon's, and because he found
Speaker 1: that his band was getting income from his publishing and
Speaker 1: he didn't like that. And he came through the door.
Speaker 1: I had taken pictures of them way back in the
Speaker 1: kind of rave days, and so we knew each other,
Speaker 1: and he came and stayed at my flat because he
Speaker 1: wanted a manager, he wanted somebody to he had no
Speaker 1: idea who else would handle him. And Van was, I've
Speaker 1: got to say, was throughout his life he's been a
Speaker 1: cont He's grumpy, he doesn't do things that you want
Speaker 1: him to do, and he was a terrible flatmate. He
Speaker 1: ruined my social life almost completely singlehandedly. But every now
Speaker 1: and then he would get up with a local band
Speaker 1: at the club and you would with his harmonica and
Speaker 1: you would see extraordinary things. The band would lift up
Speaker 1: two gears and be somebody that they couldn't do on
Speaker 1: their own. He was remarkable in that way. Bert Burns
Speaker 1: started calling and saying, you know, if you're looking after Van,
Speaker 1: I really need him to be in America. I said,
Speaker 1: I don't really look after him. I didn't feel I
Speaker 1: was a manager. I felt it was kind of a mate.
Speaker 1: So I persuaded Van to go to America and joined
Speaker 1: Bert Burns and I could get my flat back. Okay,
Speaker 1: Usually a club is a money pit. I mean now
Speaker 1: everything is computerized. Everybody uses credit cards, even harder a
Speaker 1: big money in a club. We get the money to
Speaker 1: open a club, and how is business financially in Ireland?
Speaker 1: It was very primitive, very primitive. I had a seller
Speaker 1: that's probably if I had, if I had a fire license,
Speaker 1: which I didn't have, would probably have held about a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty on a good night, Saturday night, we
Speaker 1: had nine hundred people in that seller. And we didn't
Speaker 1: have a liquor license. But we had a We had coke,
Speaker 1: had just cocon Fanta had just discovered the serum serum
Speaker 1: that you added with water and and with a gun
Speaker 1: you could fill a glass. I think it costs so
Speaker 1: little that you couldn't even calculated and we were selling
Speaker 1: it for obviously because of the club was running with
Speaker 1: condensation and very very hot. We were selling. We were
Speaker 1: selling out with all the cocon fanta we could imagine.
Speaker 1: We we did so well out of that club. That
Speaker 1: as remark, because Ireland was very primitive about licensing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, it wasn't American, it was in London.
Speaker 1: It was. It was you have a club, that's all right,
Speaker 1: as long as there's no problems where we're happy with it.
Speaker 1: So it ran for about two years and it was
Speaker 1: it was magic. It was a magic thing. We had
Speaker 1: Englishman's come over. We could afford have Alex RV and
Speaker 1: various other bands come over, which was unique in Ireland.
Speaker 1: Nobody had that class of music coming to the club.
Speaker 1: So we had queues around the block and very good
Speaker 1: and I didn't take any photographs at all for for
Speaker 1: that period. Okay, then takes off to talk to Burns.
Speaker 1: What does that leave you? He said, To give him credit,
Speaker 1: He said, come with me. And I knew Van by
Speaker 1: this time, and I knew he's not a fan of passengers,
Speaker 1: and I knew I'd be a passenger. I would have
Speaker 1: no idea how to do anything of the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that he was going to get up to. So
Speaker 1: I passed, quite honestly, So I passed, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: unhappy with that arrangement. Van paid me back and and
Speaker 1: maybe we'll cover that many years later at the Fillmore East,
Speaker 1: when Bill Graham had Quicksilver messenger service, Van Morrison and
Speaker 1: my group and Irish group that I looked after called
Speaker 1: the Heir Apparent, and that's another story we'll just telling.
Speaker 1: The music business, from my point of view, has always
Speaker 1: had a problem. You find a good songwriters, you find
Speaker 1: people who can play, You find people who are motivated,
Speaker 1: but they do not have a record company, a major
Speaker 1: record company with the major promotion income. The record company
Speaker 1: doesn't want you if you haven't got an agent, and
Speaker 1: the agent doesn't want you if you haven't got a
Speaker 1: record company. And that has is as sound today as
Speaker 1: it was then. So I had a brief after the Club.
Speaker 1: I managed this group who were then called The People.
Speaker 1: The lead guitar player was Henry McCulloch, who went on
Speaker 1: to be in the Grease Band, Joe Cocker, Wings and
Speaker 1: various other people, but he started off with a little
Speaker 1: Irish band called The People, which I looked after I
Speaker 1: could see they were good. I could not. I took
Speaker 1: him to London, but I could not get anywhere with them.
Speaker 1: And my backer was a gentleman for Canadian gentleman who
Speaker 1: who had five grand that was his that was his investment,
Speaker 1: which didn't last very long. So I didn't have a
Speaker 1: I didn't have a large I didn't have a large
Speaker 1: chance of making things happen. So I hired a plane
Speaker 1: and aer Lingus plane Irish Airlines, and I got a
Speaker 1: media friend to get a hundred and fifty of the
Speaker 1: key media journalists music and otherwise to board that plane
Speaker 1: uh and to go. A convinced Bill Graham by flying
Speaker 1: out to see him one one morning and being in
Speaker 1: his office. I had met him on a on a
Speaker 1: earlier American tours with Jimi Hendrix, and convinced him to
Speaker 1: put my band onto open for Van Morrison and Quicksilver
Speaker 1: messenger service at the Fillmore East UM inevitably, inevitably um
Speaker 1: the band where the band the American Embassy would not
Speaker 1: give them a visa because there was a various inter
Speaker 1: union situations which didn't occur. The plane aer Lingus seven
Speaker 1: oh seven UM crash landed at Shannon Airport in a
Speaker 1: sea of foam because their hydraulics had gone out over
Speaker 1: the British Channel. Uh. The journalists who saw the whole
Speaker 1: thing as a bit of a jolly, as they call it.
Speaker 1: And of course we had put an awful lot of
Speaker 1: substances on the plane, alcohol and others, and they had
Speaker 1: indulged quite heavily. They quite enjoyed the panic of the
Speaker 1: landing and aer lingus because that's their way. UM to
Speaker 1: get another plane out would take three or four hours,
Speaker 1: so they opened the bar for the journalists, and so
Speaker 1: by the time that plane got back it was a
Speaker 1: very very crashed out group of journalists who got on
Speaker 1: it and took off from New York. So the visas
Speaker 1: I managed to um sort out through a Canadian gentleman.
Speaker 1: So we flew to Toronto, and although the although the
Speaker 1: empathy there saw sauce As as non bona fide visa
Speaker 1: applicator is because of the London London thing, I managed
Speaker 1: to convince immigration lawyer to do me a favor and
Speaker 1: in the meantime I hard a small plane to take
Speaker 1: us over the Canadian border and landed Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 1: The lead guitar player of the band suitably called Brindsley Shorts,
Speaker 1: the bass player being Nick low Lost. He had never
Speaker 1: flown in a small plane before his ear drums went out.
Speaker 1: His ears completely clogged up. He couldn't hear anything, and
Speaker 1: so the show in New York wasn't everything I had
Speaker 1: hoped for, So it was a huge chaos. Most of
Speaker 1: the journalists didn't go to the show. Bill Graham in
Speaker 1: those days twenty minutes before the show. If you're press
Speaker 1: didn't show up, he would sell the tickets. You remember him,
Speaker 1: So it was a pretty much a disaster. Van Morrison
Speaker 1: was very friendly because I hadn't seen him for quite
Speaker 1: a few years. But ten, ten or fifteen people from
Speaker 1: the plane actually saw the show. But everybody panned it
Speaker 1: big time. I have column inches that you have never
Speaker 1: seen before in your life, all saying death and damnation,
Speaker 1: and but everybody was talking about Brindsey Schwartz and United
Speaker 1: Artists did a big record deal with me, and I
Speaker 1: managed to do a publishing deal while I was in
Speaker 1: the States. So that was my entree into being a
Speaker 1: kind of a manager stroke disaster arranger, and out of
Speaker 1: that came Stiff Records at a later stage. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: go back a couple of years there and goes to
Speaker 1: New York. Ultimately the club closes. What's your next step?
Speaker 1: The next step was take the group the People to London.
Speaker 1: We had reached the kind of top of Ireland. Ireland
Speaker 1: had a low ceiling in terms of groups. There wasn't
Speaker 1: there wasn't a big recorded scene or anything else. So
Speaker 1: you had to go to London. That was it. I
Speaker 1: took the band to London and I got them three gigs.
Speaker 1: I've an agent friend got them three gigs. The second
Speaker 1: one was a London had just discovered the San Francisco
Speaker 1: happening affairs. Um, you know, an acid The acid idea
Speaker 1: was happening, but nobody was taking it in London. But
Speaker 1: they were putting on like they were in it. There
Speaker 1: was bubbles on the wall, there was psychedelia, procol harm
Speaker 1: We're playing that night that we got a gig at.
Speaker 1: It was called the Blarney Club in London and the
Speaker 1: Bonds A Dog Boot Do Da band. My band, The
Speaker 1: People came on at four o'clock in the morning. Everyone
Speaker 1: was asleep. A hundred and fifty people were passed out
Speaker 1: on the floor. Everyone else had gone home, and they
Speaker 1: got up and did their thing. They were very good.
Speaker 1: They were very good rock and roll band, and the
Speaker 1: crowd of a hundred and fifty people woke up and
Speaker 1: really had a good time. At the end of it,
Speaker 1: I've got several university bookers trying to book the band,
Speaker 1: and they were offering me money. And this is what
Speaker 1: it was all about. We had. Here was a few gigs,
Speaker 1: and here was a chance to break through. A gentleman
Speaker 1: in the corner with small John Lennon glasses Um said
Speaker 1: before you do everything else, you should talk to me,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, I
Speaker 1: just talked to this guy. I'll get I'll get you
Speaker 1: in a minute. The promoter passed me by and he
Speaker 1: said I would talk to him if I was you.
Speaker 1: I said why. He said, that's Mike Jeffreys, Jimmy Hendricks manager,
Speaker 1: And thought, Mike, Mike, He hello, how are you? And
Speaker 1: it turned out that Mike Jefferies had three clubs in
Speaker 1: Miyorca Island off the coast of Spain. The British and
Speaker 1: the Spanish. We're having an argument about Gibraltar, another argument,
Speaker 1: and so the Spanish had banned all English people from
Speaker 1: getting work permits in Spain in order to negotiate. Mike
Speaker 1: Jefferies had three clubs and no bands, so he had
Speaker 1: stayed all night because he heard that we were an
Speaker 1: Irish band. Now what I didn't tell him, what I
Speaker 1: didn't tell him was that we weren't. We were a
Speaker 1: Northern Irish band. We were essentially a British fan. They
Speaker 1: had British passport. He said, you are Irish, it's it's Irish.
Speaker 1: Of course I'm Irish. Oh you know I'm Irish. So
Speaker 1: he booked us for his three clubs. I had to
Speaker 1: rush to Ireland and managed to get Irish passports and
Speaker 1: the group didn't want them. The group did not on
Speaker 1: them because they were Northern Irish and if you had
Speaker 1: an Irish passport you'd be killed. That's what they told me.
Speaker 1: I said, well, don't show them to anybody. Put them
Speaker 1: you don't need you get them to go to ma Yorker.
Speaker 1: You're not going to Belfast. So off we took to
Speaker 1: ne Yorker. Fantastic, great club, great apartment, everybody getting money
Speaker 1: every week, loads of girls on holiday, I mean heaven
Speaker 1: to a degree, great weather. And then Chas Chandler turned
Speaker 1: up chairs As, as we know, had formed a partnership
Speaker 1: with Mike Jefferies to manage Jimmi Hendrix, and he came
Speaker 1: out on holiday and of course he saw the band.
Speaker 1: Now Chads was just Chads, a great bab you know,
Speaker 1: a really nice guy, a real musician, not a great
Speaker 1: bass player. He don't of himself, but but he liked
Speaker 1: looking and feeling with musicians. So he met my bunch
Speaker 1: who were playing pretty good. Now they're doing three sets
Speaker 1: a night. It's like Hamburg I have three sets denied.
Speaker 1: They're putting in new covers, the writing of bitter materials
Speaker 1: all happening. He likes them. He told me he wanted
Speaker 1: to sign them up. I mean I could hardly. I
Speaker 1: could hardly hear how wonderful that was. Chas Chandler signed
Speaker 1: the people to his management company with Mike Jeffries, and
Speaker 1: I would be a third partner in the equation. They
Speaker 1: would own the major part. I would have a little part.
Speaker 1: So it was perfect and uh he would record us.
Speaker 1: He wanted to produce. It was just heaven. So back
Speaker 1: we go to London. Everything is really good and the
Speaker 1: first gig we've got is with Jimmy Hendrix. We're supporting
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hendrix. And again it's unbelievable. It's not a script
Speaker 1: you could you could write down. So then, um, we've
Speaker 1: got on the tour with Jimmy the Aim and Corner,
Speaker 1: the Move of the Nice the Pink Floyd on a
Speaker 1: package tour. In those days, England had package tours where
Speaker 1: each if you had a hit, you had one hit,
Speaker 1: you'd get on a package tour. And and that group
Speaker 1: the was led by a group called the Outer Limits,
Speaker 1: who are the cousin of the promoter. They had no
Speaker 1: hits I had Now the people were now named by
Speaker 1: Mike Jeffrey's girlfriend, the Heir Apparent with E I or
Speaker 1: e as the kind of as A as the hook right.
Speaker 1: The group didn't like it because they were not Irish,
Speaker 1: but they put up with it. So we went on
Speaker 1: tour for the Each show was two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: We did Mattnee's did Mattnee in the afternoon. Jimi Hendrix
Speaker 1: had twenty minutes to play. The Pink Floyd had twelve
Speaker 1: and a half minutes to play and they hated it.
Speaker 1: Everybody else got jolly that around and had a great time,
Speaker 1: you know, the move, spend a long time talking about
Speaker 1: Venereal Warts mainly, but but the Pink Floyd hated every
Speaker 1: moment of it, and you got their manager to get
Speaker 1: them a car so they wouldn't have to travel with
Speaker 1: the riff raff, you know, the other people. Jimmy was fine,
Speaker 1: he was quite happy to get on the bus with everybody,
Speaker 1: and it was. It was a lot of fun, a
Speaker 1: great experience and a lot of fun. Then we got
Speaker 1: we got on other Jimmy Hendry shows and the next
Speaker 1: thing Chad says, how do you feel about going to America?
Speaker 1: And how do I feel? I feel fantastic. Chas just
Speaker 1: point me at it. So off we went with the
Speaker 1: Soft Machine and Jimmy Hendricks experience to America again like
Speaker 1: opening a door of the unbelievable. You could not imagine.
Speaker 1: I thought, this is success, this is success. They're also
Speaker 1: paying us very good money. I was getting a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty dollars a week, which in those days night
Speaker 1: was was was very good money. When all your expenses
Speaker 1: were paid, you know, we were doing well. So that
Speaker 1: was the tour. Jerry Stickles, who is the uh Jerry
Speaker 1: Jerry was the tour manager and a rare. We were.
Speaker 1: We were in a very interesting thing. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that at the time, but the animals them Harriman's Hermits
Speaker 1: and the Beatles had been to America. No other group
Speaker 1: from England really had been there, and we were. They're
Speaker 1: making our own name. Jerry Stickles, a scaffolder from Folkeston
Speaker 1: in England who got the job with an experience because
Speaker 1: he had a van and they needed one at the time,
Speaker 1: turned out to be one of the great touring guys.
Speaker 1: He turned out to be a real happening and a
Speaker 1: real resourceful guy because you had to be because of
Speaker 1: no security. There was no criteria, there was no template
Speaker 1: that made the tour work. There was no anything. Most
Speaker 1: of the gigs had the local police chief who knew
Speaker 1: the promoter. He was the security and he wasn't really
Speaker 1: out for the band, and particularly not Jimi Hendrix, who
Speaker 1: was slightly the wrong color for that. For a lot
Speaker 1: of the gigs that we were doing, it was amazing experience.
Speaker 1: The girls were extraordinary good looking. I mean it was
Speaker 1: and and everywhere, and they were everywhere. So the air partent,
Speaker 1: we're having a good time. Um, the group was going well.
Speaker 1: Jerry stick has had to go back to England for
Speaker 1: a month for um for a medical for a medical
Speaker 1: procedure that that he had, and I got a briefcase
Speaker 1: and a baretta, and I was told on the tour manager.
Speaker 1: So I became for about six weeks the tour manager
Speaker 1: for the Jimmy Hendris experience on the road in America,
Speaker 1: with no idea at all. How really it went great
Speaker 1: experience and I had a great time. Jimmy was a
Speaker 1: very nice guy. Um. You know, he was always trying
Speaker 1: to find out what's happening to the money, and I
Speaker 1: had to tell him that I didn't know what was happening.
Speaker 1: I put it into various banks in a company called
Speaker 1: you Amita, and you know, sometimes I would go into
Speaker 1: a bank with three or four hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 1: the guards would draw their guns when I opened my briefcase.
Speaker 1: There was no credit cards. Nobody had a credit card.
Speaker 1: It was all cash. And nobody had a flight case.
Speaker 1: A lot of these martial equipment had no flight case.
Speaker 1: They had plastic covers. They were ripped to shreds by
Speaker 1: going down the luggage ramps. I mean, it was total
Speaker 1: amateur land. And I thought, but there must be you
Speaker 1: know there these people obviously know what they're doing and
Speaker 1: there must be something going on here that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And the answer was there wasn't. The tour. The tour
Speaker 1: zig zagged all over the road, all over the country. Um.
Speaker 1: I think around that time it was a fifty five
Speaker 1: and our speed limit because of the because of the
Speaker 1: gash problems, and you know, everybody was on the CB
Speaker 1: trying to beat the you know and get to the
Speaker 1: next gig. It was an extraordinary time. And the band
Speaker 1: where Mitch was, you know, great drummer that he was,
Speaker 1: he was also a pain in the arts because he
Speaker 1: wanted to be like Jimmy. I mean, Jimmy was so
Speaker 1: miles ahead of everything around him in terms of his
Speaker 1: playing ability. Noel was very pragmatic and he just got
Speaker 1: on with stuff. He pulled me out of a swimming pool.
Speaker 1: I can't swim, and my band threw me into the
Speaker 1: swimming pool in I think Tampa, Florida. Noel tripping saw
Speaker 1: me at the bottom of the pool, you know, trying
Speaker 1: to trying to memorize any swimming manual that I'd ever
Speaker 1: seen in my life. And when he's six, he's very
Speaker 1: light man and he got jumped in and pulled me out.
Speaker 1: That was a That was a lifesaver. Anyway, we did
Speaker 1: well and we toured and Jimmy produced the air Parents album. Okay,
Speaker 1: before you get there, you know you're talking about the
Speaker 1: old days. People don't realize where it was when it
Speaker 1: was all in cash and it was also difficult to
Speaker 1: get paid and difficult to get paid a hundred cents
Speaker 1: on the dollar. Did you ever have to use the BARRETTA?
Speaker 1: I never did. I was very anti guns, very anti guns.
Speaker 1: It was in the bottom of my briefcase for ages.
Speaker 1: And I did from time to time hang out with
Speaker 1: some other tour managers. There was a tour manager who
Speaker 1: looked after the animals and he was a very fancy dresser.
Speaker 1: He was very sharp. He had a waistcoat and he
Speaker 1: carried a baretta in his waistcoat, right, and he showed
Speaker 1: every everyone would show the gun you had. They all
Speaker 1: had different guns. And uh so he was in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Flora and Black Geezer. Unfortunately, you know, alcohold Up said
Speaker 1: give me that briefcase after the show. So he he
Speaker 1: pulled out the baretta to show, to show whatever, and
Speaker 1: fired miles away from the guy. He fired it when
Speaker 1: it ricocheted off the wall and hit the guy in
Speaker 1: the lake. Right, So the guy is down bleeding profusely.
Speaker 1: Black and white pulls up and they're congratulating. They're congratulating
Speaker 1: my tour manager on his acumen and killing or trying
Speaker 1: to kill, you know, locals. I mean, It's America. Was
Speaker 1: very odd, Bob. You you've obviously been there forever. But
Speaker 1: the bottom line is it was so racid. I I didn't.
Speaker 1: I came from a racist country where where Protestants and
Speaker 1: Catholics resented each other big time, and here I was
Speaker 1: in America. I thought John F. Kennedy, in my naivety,
Speaker 1: had solved all these kind of racial problems. I was
Speaker 1: totally astonished by the racism, you know, I was amazed.
Speaker 1: I could not understand why somebody wasn't doing something. But
Speaker 1: it was everywhere. And Jimmy Hendrix was a black guy
Speaker 1: in a white in a white world to a degree,
Speaker 1: because we were playing white gigs everywhere, and there wasn't
Speaker 1: really an awful lot of our color Breton in the shows.
Speaker 1: So it was very very interesting. The Vanilla Fared a
Speaker 1: good example of guns is the Vanilla Fudge did a
Speaker 1: week or ten days on the tour. They joined the
Speaker 1: tour and I was told it was during my time touring.
Speaker 1: I was told that they would come and it would
Speaker 1: you know, they'd go on third and what would happen,
Speaker 1: et cetera. I was on the stage in I think Jackson, Mississippi,
Speaker 1: and uh, this young dark guy in a silver suit
Speaker 1: in a in a shiny suit, and a very big
Speaker 1: man that was with him came came up and said,
Speaker 1: I'm the manager of the Vanilla Fudge. Our gear hasn't
Speaker 1: turned up um, so we'll have to use yours. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'll ask the band. It should be okay,
Speaker 1: but I'll ask. I'll ask the group whatever, at which
Speaker 1: point the guy, the big guy, pulled the front of
Speaker 1: my shirt down and nearly knocked me over, but he
Speaker 1: literally pulled the front off, and when I looked up,
Speaker 1: I had a very big gun in my mouth. Right.
Speaker 1: So I'm mumbling to whom you can use enter your rooric,
Speaker 1: you know, take good all. The following day they gave
Speaker 1: me a small envelope with about five grand in it,
Speaker 1: which is more than I had seen for a while.
Speaker 1: I was asked to look after the band and he'd
Speaker 1: been a little bit over what was it zealous? I
Speaker 1: think what's the word? He said, And that was another
Speaker 1: part of Americans history. From my point of view, it
Speaker 1: was it was what it's the wild West really and
Speaker 1: being in the music business with Jimmy Hendrix at that
Speaker 1: stage was was a great introduction. Okay, So Jimmy agrees
Speaker 1: to produce the Air Appearent album, Yes he did. He
Speaker 1: He said to me, I'd like to produce them. What
Speaker 1: do you think? And I said, oh, no problem, Jimmy,
Speaker 1: no problem. Uh, they will love it. He said fine.
Speaker 1: He said, look, Dave, I want to tell you this.
Speaker 1: You know, you know I'm I'm not great at time keeping.
Speaker 1: He was. At this moment, we were in l A.
Speaker 1: And the tour had had slowed off for a week
Speaker 1: or two. It had just they've been doing far too much.
Speaker 1: And he was in this house up on mum Holland
Speaker 1: and it had I remember the bedroom had nothing but mirrors.
Speaker 1: The bedroom was a mirrored room. So he said to me,
Speaker 1: I want to do this, Dave. I want so you're
Speaker 1: you're I'll give you permission to come in my bedroom
Speaker 1: and get me out. Every day. I want to go
Speaker 1: to the studio, and I want to be there at
Speaker 1: ten o'clock, okay, and it doesn't matter where I've been,
Speaker 1: you come and get me. I'll give you full permission
Speaker 1: to do this. So the very first night, very very
Speaker 1: first morning, you know, ac quarter to ten, I'm tapping
Speaker 1: on his door, knowing that he got in at seven
Speaker 1: or something. And eventually I'll go in, Jimmy, Jimmy, and
Speaker 1: Jimmy is is in his bed in the mirrored room.
Speaker 1: And I did I didn't have my camera, a mirrored
Speaker 1: room with black sheets, black satin sheets, and a blonde
Speaker 1: girl on each side of him. They looked like twins,
Speaker 1: and they were a Scandinavian kind of couple who had
Speaker 1: he had adopted. He loved. He loved blonde women. We
Speaker 1: all do. So I'm going Jimmy, Jimmy, you me and
Speaker 1: kind of shaking him and there's no movement. So eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, I remembered what he told me, and I get,
Speaker 1: you know, tough and getting him out there. So getting
Speaker 1: him out, giving him coffee and getting him to the
Speaker 1: studio became my job. And he did a remarkable He
Speaker 1: was there every pretty much every day, and and it's
Speaker 1: the guitar player, and an awful lot of the he
Speaker 1: played down. He played down so he would sound like
Speaker 1: the guitar thing. It was fairly extraordinary. And my Facebook
Speaker 1: page has a lovely picture of me and Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 1: in the studio making the air parent outing. But a
Speaker 1: lovely guy like that, a lovely a lovely, genuine Geezer.
Speaker 1: Aside from the extraordinary guitar playing, he got fed up
Speaker 1: with the with the kind of chitling circuit stuff that
Speaker 1: made his name. I mean, people just wanted the big stuff.
Speaker 1: They wanted the fancy by the guitar player behind your back,
Speaker 1: you know, you use it as a phallic symbol, you know,
Speaker 1: and do all of that thing. And and eventually he
Speaker 1: got a little cheese with that, as you would. But
Speaker 1: that was what made him happen in England and that
Speaker 1: transferred to America. So the album was made. What are
Speaker 1: the next steps for you? Well, I would think at
Speaker 1: that point we were on Buddha Records. There was a
Speaker 1: guy called Artie rip whatever, and Artie was was good
Speaker 1: value for money talking, but he didn't do very much
Speaker 1: with the record. And eventually the band decided that they
Speaker 1: would get back to England and expose the album too
Speaker 1: in England. So a few decisions were made and we
Speaker 1: got back to England, at which point the band broke up.
Speaker 1: Henry McCulloch had got busted in Canada for marijuana possession
Speaker 1: and had been told that he would possibly he would
Speaker 1: possibly go to jail because they wanted to get musicians.
Speaker 1: At that time, getting somebody close to Hendricks was was
Speaker 1: a media thing, so he jumped bail. Henry Henry was
Speaker 1: advised by Mike Jeffrey's people to jump bail and and
Speaker 1: we got another guitar player out there. It wasn't half
Speaker 1: of talent, and when they got back to England they
Speaker 1: broke up. That's when I got found the five thousand
Speaker 1: pounds investor to start a management company with Brindley Swartz.
Speaker 1: So that connects to that story. When I would try
Speaker 1: and use all my experience that I gained in two
Speaker 1: years in America and and would and would finally, you know,
Speaker 1: use it to to find an English band and find
Speaker 1: a group that could conquer the world. Meat putting that
Speaker 1: in the Melody Maker. Band wanted must have own equipment
Speaker 1: and van, and they didn't. They lied to me. They
Speaker 1: didn't own the van. And they didn't own the gear.
Speaker 1: But I saw in Nick Low. I have to say
Speaker 1: I did see Nick Low. He had a couple of
Speaker 1: songs that were a bit crossis into the Nash at
Speaker 1: the time, but he um he had something and the
Speaker 1: band were good. The band were unusually good, and I
Speaker 1: thought I could make something of them. The trip to
Speaker 1: America turned out not too well, but I had got
Speaker 1: an ongoing deal with two albums firm from United Artists,
Speaker 1: and so that income the band um joined together to
Speaker 1: live in one house together like a commune. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: the group proceeded to do three hundred gigs a year
Speaker 1: for four years and form a very big name for
Speaker 1: themselves in a low level kind of music musical area.
Speaker 1: Their second album was called Despite It All, which is
Speaker 1: an apt title, and it was very very good for
Speaker 1: four years, which is long enough for any group if
Speaker 1: they don't make it. That's when the seeds of descent
Speaker 1: set in and I left Tom to put a studio
Speaker 1: together at the Hope and Anchor in Islington, the famous
Speaker 1: public house, and the band broke up. What was your
Speaker 1: thought in terms of building a studio, Well, I wanted
Speaker 1: a vowel studio. I bought two from Abbey Road. I
Speaker 1: bought to J fifty four. I think they were called
Speaker 1: studio machines, which I was told where a part of
Speaker 1: the Abbey Road UM machines that the Beatles possibly had
Speaker 1: played on. I got the I got the desk out
Speaker 1: of Decca that I was told what had produced Nights
Speaker 1: in White Sason Satin and I set up a Vale
Speaker 1: studio eight track with two of the two machines together
Speaker 1: with one head and started recording at the Hope and
Speaker 1: Anchor I put it. It obviously went to the stage,
Speaker 1: so any music played on the stage was recordable by me.
Speaker 1: So the studio was going quite well, and um I
Speaker 1: also booked. I booked the venue so it was full
Speaker 1: all the time. Again I did my favorite thing of
Speaker 1: having a very small hundred hundred licensed club and putting
Speaker 1: four hundred people in it. I had an alcohol license
Speaker 1: at this point as well, so that was good. Uh.
Speaker 1: And a group called Flipped City wanted to play and
Speaker 1: their manager was hustling me and I put them on
Speaker 1: our support with a band called Kokomo and they were terrible,
Speaker 1: but they had a guy lead singer who did a
Speaker 1: song called third Rate Romance, Low Rench Rendezvous and he
Speaker 1: turned out his name was Declan mcmallus. So I said
Speaker 1: to him, you've got any original songs, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got a few. I said, well, I've got a
Speaker 1: studio upstairs. I've just set it up, so I'll do
Speaker 1: some demos for you if you fancy doing a few.
Speaker 1: So he did thirty eight songs in the night. We
Speaker 1: finished at five in the morning, and I gave him
Speaker 1: a tape of his thirty eight songs and I thought
Speaker 1: he could be good. This guy could be useful. But
Speaker 1: I put the band on again a month or two
Speaker 1: later and they were still terrible. He was good, but
Speaker 1: they were really rubbish. So while I was there, I
Speaker 1: put on a lot of music. All the London music
Speaker 1: traveled through the Hope and Anchor Pub recorded by me,
Speaker 1: and out of that I got the idea of Stiff Records. Also,
Speaker 1: Stiff Records was empty major record label because they didn't
Speaker 1: care about anything except their their money, the ideas that
Speaker 1: they liked, the kind of music that they sponsored, the
Speaker 1: kind of satin trousers and the high heeled boots and
Speaker 1: the pink hair dues. I wasn't a big fan of
Speaker 1: and it wasn't very good. That prog rock area wasn't
Speaker 1: my favorite, and because the pubs were now my interests,
Speaker 1: and bands playing three minute numbers with no solos, with
Speaker 1: with happening with a couple of covers in there from
Speaker 1: some really decent people became my interests and they were
Speaker 1: the I got the idea from there. I managed it
Speaker 1: wasn't his name was now, but I managed Declin, I
Speaker 1: managed Geane Drury, I managed Nick Lowe who come came
Speaker 1: to me with my partner at the time, Jake Vieira,
Speaker 1: and we started the tapes from the Hope and Anchor
Speaker 1: became stuff we could release because it was all Graham
Speaker 1: Parker I found at that time. He came to me
Speaker 1: with a couple of songs that somebody said, Dave's got
Speaker 1: a studio, why don't you go down there. I got
Speaker 1: him a deal with Phonogram, which was it's the quickest
Speaker 1: deal I've ever ever made. I did the demo on Monday.
Speaker 1: On Friday, I gave it to a gentleman called Charlie Gillett,
Speaker 1: who was a great Unfortunately he's passed on. He was
Speaker 1: a marvelous spotter and really nice guy and helpful, but
Speaker 1: also he could spot things. He discovered Dark Straights me
Speaker 1: a load of bands and I gave it to him.
Speaker 1: He had a radio show on a Sunday on he
Speaker 1: played the track between You and Me. On Monday I
Speaker 1: got a call from Nigel Grange, the head of A
Speaker 1: and R at Phonogram, and on Tuesday I had a
Speaker 1: deal sorted out and we were doing the paperwork. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's low down a couple of steps. Hey, who owns
Speaker 1: the Hope and Anchor. The Hope and Anchor is owned
Speaker 1: by a pub now called Green King. It's owned by
Speaker 1: by a brewery. I mean when you were there who
Speaker 1: owned it? Was owned by a brewery called Watney's. And
Speaker 1: it was right. It was run by a landlord who
Speaker 1: had a tendency in those days the the breweries owned
Speaker 1: all the pubs in different configurations, and they had tenants
Speaker 1: in to run them. And obviously, if you if you
Speaker 1: haven't got a big crowd in your pub, getting a
Speaker 1: music license and getting music into was a way for
Speaker 1: you to sell more booze. So there was a landlord
Speaker 1: there called Fred Granger at the Hope and Anchor. He
Speaker 1: and I became partners in the studio. And where did
Speaker 1: the money come from across the bar Okay, and you
Speaker 1: have a studio who's doing the engineering and producing and
Speaker 1: all that stuff. Me me, I built it. It took
Speaker 1: me a year to build it. I learned all about
Speaker 1: elect I had a couple of electronic guys come down
Speaker 1: and give me chores. They give me like your list,
Speaker 1: like your list of how to get this recording guy.
Speaker 1: They give me chores. And during the week I would
Speaker 1: solder and do what they told me, and they'd come
Speaker 1: the following week and give me more. I could only
Speaker 1: afford to get them one day a week, not to
Speaker 1: do any work, just to tell me what to do.
Speaker 1: I had a very good sound. I had Willie Mitchell, right,
Speaker 1: I loved I loved the sound of Willie Mitchell. I
Speaker 1: thought that was one of the great England didn't have
Speaker 1: that sound. They had like a blank ye snare drum.
Speaker 1: English bands were more theatrical than musical. I always thought,
Speaker 1: you know, I always thought the English liked the theater
Speaker 1: and they liked the theatricals, and so I started a
Speaker 1: lot of other people. But but that was the main
Speaker 1: thing in in David Bowie h Pete Towns and I
Speaker 1: mean Freddie our Freddie a queen. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I always thought he was a man chasing around looking
Speaker 1: for the other end of his mic stand by and large,
Speaker 1: but that was the English thing. I love the the
Speaker 1: R and B, the rhythm and blues. And Willie Mitchell
Speaker 1: I had every drummer who came to the Hope and
Speaker 1: Anchor for any reason, I would kidnap take him upstairs
Speaker 1: and I had a drum kit set up, and I
Speaker 1: would get him to play the drum kit for as
Speaker 1: long as I could. I'd give him drink, I'd give
Speaker 1: him anything. So he kept playing on the drum kit
Speaker 1: while I fiddled to try and make the sound that
Speaker 1: was in my head, which was like high records al Green.
Speaker 1: That that sound. So I I thought, buggering, I can't.
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. Nobody seemed to be able to.
Speaker 1: I wrote to Willie Mitchell. I wrote to him, I said,
Speaker 1: of the studio, I love the sound, blah blah. He
Speaker 1: wrote back to me with a mic set up right
Speaker 1: from Willie Mitchell. He wrote back, and all the mics
Speaker 1: were incredibly cheap. I had been going and trying to
Speaker 1: get expensive stuff and trying to make and it was
Speaker 1: a vow sound. The early days. The tamlot was all
Speaker 1: valve I mean, obviously, So I went out and got
Speaker 1: all his microphones and put him in the in the
Speaker 1: place that he said they should go, all the same mics.
Speaker 1: The next drummer who came in downstairs turned into Al Jackson.
Speaker 1: He sat at the drum kit, he played the drum
Speaker 1: kid and he sounded like Al Jackson, My favorite drummer.
Speaker 1: And that was the Willie Mitchell drum set. I've been
Speaker 1: using it ever since. And it came automatically. I didn't,
Speaker 1: you know. He told me a couple of e q s,
Speaker 1: but nothing dramatic. He just showed me the positioning of
Speaker 1: the mics, and that was pretty much what Stiff Records
Speaker 1: had based around that kind of drum set. I ordered
Speaker 1: to Nick Lowe then and we made a whole career
Speaker 1: out of it. Okay, why did you get involved with
Speaker 1: Jake Riviera? Was that good or bad? Jake Rivieira was
Speaker 1: quite a smart geither now I'm not I'm not blowing
Speaker 1: my own trumpet by saying that I was doing more
Speaker 1: things around the place in the Hope and Anchor than
Speaker 1: Jake was. Jake saw me in his in his front
Speaker 1: vision he could see me, and he was following me
Speaker 1: around a little bit. He was stalking me a fraction
Speaker 1: and one of but it was very smart geezer, very
Speaker 1: very witty, very sharp talker. And he got a job
Speaker 1: as tour manager on the very first dr Feel Good
Speaker 1: Tour of America, and he went around there, and he
Speaker 1: was very interested in record labels. It always had a
Speaker 1: he always had a fascination of recording more than me.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was thinking of Warner Brothers and others.
Speaker 1: He was thinking of modern and all the Brunswick and whatever.
Speaker 1: So he went around America would feel Goods and the
Speaker 1: field Goods loved small record labels and alcohol, two things
Speaker 1: they loved. So they went around all these small record
Speaker 1: labels in every town in America. Who were the owners
Speaker 1: were dying off, you know, they've lost their money or whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: all these things were becoming bankrupt, but they all had
Speaker 1: stocks of singles in the warehouse that the wife of
Speaker 1: the owner who died of a heart attack still had.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to do with. Jake came back
Speaker 1: from that tour and said to me. He said to me, Dave,
Speaker 1: I've got an idea. Let's start a small record label,
Speaker 1: your tapes from the Hope and anchor right, and my
Speaker 1: ideas about what we'll do. He used to work for
Speaker 1: in that agency. He was very very good, uh clib
Speaker 1: geither so fine. We got together, the two of us.
Speaker 1: I had the management company, I managed declan Acmanus Injury,
Speaker 1: various other people, Graham Parker and we joined together and
Speaker 1: the money came from the management company to start the
Speaker 1: record label and Nick Low. We pressed ten thousand, We
Speaker 1: did it in five hundred, five hundreds and sold them
Speaker 1: and then went on. There's a guy in England who
Speaker 1: was the genius of the independent record thing, John Peel.
Speaker 1: John Peel was the most extraordinary guy. God knows how
Speaker 1: he came up with his ideas, but he was a
Speaker 1: lovely guy and he really liked Stiff. So from our
Speaker 1: first record, So it Goes by Nick Low, he played
Speaker 1: it on the radio and we became something. And we
Speaker 1: hated major record companies with such a passion that we
Speaker 1: loved making them look bad. We loved doing it. There
Speaker 1: were five newspapers, five music papers on the street every
Speaker 1: week who needed input. They needed stuff is like the internet.
Speaker 1: They needed loads and loads. We invented. We we we
Speaker 1: would sit late at night thinking up schemes. I mean,
Speaker 1: we love the record. We love the major record is
Speaker 1: being embarrassed. Dar Straits had had their manager went to
Speaker 1: a marketing meeting at Phonogram and he was complaining that
Speaker 1: they were in a house bag. They were in a
Speaker 1: Phonogram house bag. Their new big head and reckless Eric,
Speaker 1: a guy that nobody'd ever heard of, had a four
Speaker 1: color bag. And it brought that all of that was
Speaker 1: made to measure because they had no sense of humor,
Speaker 1: they had no anything. They weren't very smart or talented.
Speaker 1: They were all pompous, black, black, bloody bmg w's and
Speaker 1: it wasn't you know. They couldn't keep up. So that's
Speaker 1: what our slogans. We lead, others follow and can't keep
Speaker 1: up surfing on the new wave, you know, Tomorrow's sound
Speaker 1: today where the sun never sets. That we became the
Speaker 1: slogan company of things, and our groups loved it. The
Speaker 1: groups loved it. It was like a family affair with
Speaker 1: everybody in it, everybody laughing. The newspapers every week, everyone
Speaker 1: bought all the music papers and read all of them.
Speaker 1: So all the you know, we had journalists on the road,
Speaker 1: but we called Elvis Costello, declar McManus. You know. We
Speaker 1: said to him, we had a meeting with him and said, look,
Speaker 1: we're getting nowhere with this great album you've just made, right,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna have to change your name. And he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: so what so we're gonna call you Elvis. And he
Speaker 1: didn't blink. The man did not blink. And Costello came
Speaker 1: from his um, his wife's name, her her name, and
Speaker 1: he was great. Elvis was ready to promote. He'd come
Speaker 1: from a hard life working the computer programmer, which is
Speaker 1: putting putting the cards into the computer, and he um,
Speaker 1: he was great, and he pulled a lot of other
Speaker 1: people on as well. Okay, let's slow down and start
Speaker 1: with Elvis. You make the record. A couple of questions here,
Speaker 1: how does he end up making the record with Clover,
Speaker 1: a band from San Francisco though in England at the time,
Speaker 1: and he ends up with CBS Records. Tell me the
Speaker 1: story there. Clover banned from Marin County. The pub music
Speaker 1: was was focused on a band who came from Maron
Speaker 1: County called Eggs over Easy. I went to a pub
Speaker 1: in town to do a do a deal with the
Speaker 1: landlord to get some of my bands in and there
Speaker 1: was a group playing. There was only ten people in
Speaker 1: the room. There was nobody in the room. I'm talking
Speaker 1: to the landlord and this group is playing, and I'm
Speaker 1: listening in the back of my mind and thinking, what's that.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting turnaround in This four piece band is playing, right.
Speaker 1: I talked to them, I said, what, who? What? It
Speaker 1: turns out that Chas Chandler had been going to make
Speaker 1: an album of them for Polydor, but Polydor had had
Speaker 1: changed their mind, so they come from Marin County. I
Speaker 1: based all these bands playing the short numbers and doing
Speaker 1: this kind of slightly um rhythm and blues. The kind
Speaker 1: of songwriters they've vibe off them. I stole their idea.
Speaker 1: I still in touch with them. I'm I'm good friends
Speaker 1: with them to this day. I got a whole lot
Speaker 1: of English bands two play that kind of style, to
Speaker 1: do three sets, To do three sets in a pub,
Speaker 1: to learn the game, to know what they're about, to
Speaker 1: put your songs in, put a cover in, keep the
Speaker 1: audience happy. It's a ub The majors didn't want to know.
Speaker 1: They sent a few people down to look at it
Speaker 1: because there was quite a lot of people starting to
Speaker 1: go and said, Oh, there's nothing happening here. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just pub rock, right, that's a that's what they said.
Speaker 1: So Clover had been a favorite of Brindsley Schwartz when
Speaker 1: they lived together in the house. I had found this
Speaker 1: uh album by Clover. I'd given it to Nick Lowe
Speaker 1: who loved the music on it, and he was a
Speaker 1: big Clover fan. When we decided to have a management company,
Speaker 1: Jake and I and start the record company, we thought,
Speaker 1: who is there in America that we could get some
Speaker 1: use out of? And we thought, what about that band Clover?
Speaker 1: So I went over. He and I went over and
Speaker 1: we chatted up Clover. Harmonica player Huey Lewis, but nobody
Speaker 1: was paying any attention to the harmonica player. John McPhee
Speaker 1: was the guitar player. And they had long hair, and
Speaker 1: they wore belts with conscios, and they had black leather
Speaker 1: waistcoats and they looked fantastic cowboy boots. They had to
Speaker 1: look long hair. They looked like Tin Lizzie to a degree.
Speaker 1: You know. Girls really liked them in Marin County and
Speaker 1: I said, come to England, Come to England. They vacillated.
Speaker 1: They never came. We talked to them, they never came.
Speaker 1: Come on, come over, you'll have a good time. The
Speaker 1: day they got on the plane by themselves to come
Speaker 1: to England was the day that Johnny Rotten said fuck
Speaker 1: you to a Geezer on primetime television in England. Right
Speaker 1: punk came roaring out of the shed as the day
Speaker 1: this wild bunch of of of Wyant Earth Gunfighter, the
Speaker 1: Okay Canal looking group turned up in in England. Bad timing.
Speaker 1: We did everything with it. We got them a record deal,
Speaker 1: we did everything. They've toured us in Lizzie. That was
Speaker 1: a very big part of it. We got everything going
Speaker 1: for the nothing worked. They were having a good time.
Speaker 1: They were hanging out with musicians, they were playing, they
Speaker 1: were going to the key clubs. Girls loved them. They
Speaker 1: were on every tour we could get them onto, and
Speaker 1: Jake and I were very persuasive and nothing happened. So
Speaker 1: eventually Elvis had these songs and there was nobody around
Speaker 1: with his kind of little style. He had a little
Speaker 1: guitar style except Clover, so Clover playing not Hugh. He didn't.
Speaker 1: There's no harmonica on the album, but Clover played John
Speaker 1: McPhee playing that great solo on Allison. But but the
Speaker 1: British public didn't take to them. They didn't take to this.
Speaker 1: So we change Elves's name and I got him to
Speaker 1: play at the CBS convention, which was in a hotel
Speaker 1: on Park Lane, right in the middle of London, in
Speaker 1: the hotspot, and there was a convention in the hotel.
Speaker 1: So I got Elvis down there with a little lamp,
Speaker 1: playing in his funny clothes from his album cover sleeve,
Speaker 1: and I said, whatever happens, don't stop playing, a right L.
Speaker 1: We called him L at this point, L. Don't stop playing.
Speaker 1: They'll notice you, they'll notice your song, they will know
Speaker 1: who the fund is that they're excusing my language. But
Speaker 1: but um, so he's playing away and I said, no,
Speaker 1: matter what happens, police while you'll get the police, keep playing.
Speaker 1: So he's there playing and he wouldn't stop. And they said,
Speaker 1: move along, move along, Will you stop that? If you
Speaker 1: don't stop that, I'll ar rescue blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So they arrest him. He's still playing as they put
Speaker 1: him into the back of their wagon. Right, so he
Speaker 1: goes to he doesn't know what to do now? He
Speaker 1: gets the at least to call Stiff Records, and I
Speaker 1: answered the phone. We've only got a staff of three,
Speaker 1: so one of us and to the phone and they said,
Speaker 1: we've got a We've got a guy here called Elvis Costello.
Speaker 1: He says he works for you. I said, I've never
Speaker 1: heard him. So I have a friend on I TV News,
Speaker 1: which is the commercial news station, and I say, look,
Speaker 1: I've got this guy. He's been he's been arrested. They
Speaker 1: keep him in right. I said, he's been arrested. Is
Speaker 1: it a really good story? And he said, now it's
Speaker 1: not enough of an angle, Dave. You know I can't.
Speaker 1: You know, there's no way you can get this on
Speaker 1: news the following day. What happens in England if you're
Speaker 1: if you're overnight in the cells, you go to both
Speaker 1: street Magistrates, Straights Court and both street magitates. Is the
Speaker 1: old Bailey. It's it's a traditional English how they dealt
Speaker 1: with an English miscreate. And he gets fined twenty pounds
Speaker 1: and bound over to keep the piece. That's the term,
Speaker 1: you're bound over to keep the peace twenty quid. My
Speaker 1: I TV man is now outside. This is a story
Speaker 1: twenty quid, Elvis Costello whatever it was on the news
Speaker 1: twice that day and the following day. We've shipped about
Speaker 1: five thousand albums. There was record shops on the phone saying,
Speaker 1: who is this guy Helvis blah blah blah clover as
Speaker 1: a background band. That was the start of my aim
Speaker 1: is true. And that was the story of Elvis Costello. Okay,
Speaker 1: I only know in the US when it came out
Speaker 1: on Columbia Columbia in the UK, was it out on Stiff?
Speaker 1: Of course, of course it was stiff. Stiff designed it all.
Speaker 1: But we were in the middle, Jake Rivieria and Dave
Speaker 1: Robinson were in the middle of doing a stiff deal
Speaker 1: for CBS for Columbia to sign the whole label. Now
Speaker 1: we were going to get what we deserved all its time.
Speaker 1: We were now going to get a big machine in
Speaker 1: America behind us. To that's when Jake jumped ship. Everyone said,
Speaker 1: what did Jake jump ship? Well, that's the reason Jake
Speaker 1: jumped ship is there was a big income. There was
Speaker 1: half a million dollars on the table and they had
Speaker 1: to have Elvis. They loved able to why From from
Speaker 1: the story of the Park, Layne hotel. They had all
Speaker 1: seen him. That the story, that the legend of that
Speaker 1: predicted thing and the album that he just made became
Speaker 1: the fulcrum of the whole situation. And Jake left. Jake
Speaker 1: saw his chance to get out from under my shadow
Speaker 1: or whatever and left. And it was a very on you.
Speaker 1: I had not foreseen any second of it. Okay, you
Speaker 1: know what's that seventy eight? Did my seven agent? Right?
Speaker 1: My name is true? Comes out? So just when you
Speaker 1: make the deal with CBS, is just when Jake leaves? Yes,
Speaker 1: so at this point because in America everything is delayed.
Speaker 1: But that was the first hit stiff record, and everything
Speaker 1: came after that. He and Dry etcetera. Oh yeah, Oh,
Speaker 1: Elvis was the business. Elvis was the business. And that
Speaker 1: all culminated in all that kind of effort and that
Speaker 1: kind of promotion and that kind of snappy you know
Speaker 1: who gives a fun kind of attitude. All culminated then
Speaker 1: in that Jake leaves. Do you give him half of
Speaker 1: the five hundred thousand? No, he has all of it.
Speaker 1: I gave him Elvis Costello. I said, Jake, you'll need
Speaker 1: some income. Take Elvis gone. But it's Friday. I want
Speaker 1: a settlement complete, signed by you by Monday morning, first thing.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you don't get elvis. I wanted. Now, we're going
Speaker 1: to go to the house of my lawyer, your lawyer
Speaker 1: as well our lawyer, and we are going to have
Speaker 1: a settlement. Because I realized that if we didn't settle quickly,
Speaker 1: we're both very very opedy geezers. Right, we would never settle,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, we would never get said. Also,
Speaker 1: I spent the weekend looking through our accounts. The accountant
Speaker 1: of the company, the bookkeeper, was a Jake appointee. I
Speaker 1: went downstairs when Jake said he was leaving. I looked
Speaker 1: in this man's desk. I found drawers upon drawers of receipts,
Speaker 1: untouched receipts, unformulated receipts. Right. I spent the weekend finding
Speaker 1: we owed a hundred fifty grand, right, which we didn't
Speaker 1: have a hundred fifty thousand we owed that hadn't been paid, right,
Speaker 1: But but we had forty grand in the bank. We
Speaker 1: were cash rich if if creditor large. Right, So I've
Speaker 1: decided to spend the forty grand on injury. I thought,
Speaker 1: my aim, it is true, great, but the day is
Speaker 1: gone Elvis is probably going to go with Jake. He
Speaker 1: was a Jake. Jake went out of his way to
Speaker 1: be friendly to Elvis, and that was a good bloke.
Speaker 1: You know. I still talk to him. We have a
Speaker 1: really good time with whatever. But I thought Ian Dury's
Speaker 1: New Boots and Panties was the record that would really
Speaker 1: set up Stiff at the time. Okay, let's look down listen. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: so you have all this, you make the deal with
Speaker 1: CBS Redistribution five hundred k. They're gonna distribute all Stiff
Speaker 1: product around the world in England too. No, No, it
Speaker 1: was just the USA and Canada, North America. So you
Speaker 1: have UK right, Stiff had it everywhere else. Okay, And
Speaker 1: Jake walks with Elvis, Yes, who only has one album
Speaker 1: at this point in time, and you also give him
Speaker 1: the five k to go away, Yes, because you thought
Speaker 1: that what you had left was worth more than that.
Speaker 1: I thought that we could survive. We had more artists.
Speaker 1: Jacob Jake at this point. It also started game quite
Speaker 1: argumentative about what bands he liked and what bands I liked.
Speaker 1: We we had there was a schism that had started.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a big number, but I was aware that
Speaker 1: it was going to come to a fruition, come to
Speaker 1: a head at some point, but I didn't think he
Speaker 1: was just gonna skip. That half a million would have
Speaker 1: set us up in America. We might have done a chrysalis.
Speaker 1: We might have, you know, one person in America, one
Speaker 1: person in England. But I had belief in the label
Speaker 1: to survive, and he he thought by him leaving, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't survive. Was that always his goal to leave or
Speaker 1: was he trying to say I will leave so that
Speaker 1: you give him the business. No, we weren't. We weren't, Bob,
Speaker 1: you you have a great eye for the business, etcetera.
Speaker 1: We were too kind of quite idealistic. Although there was
Speaker 1: money lying around, we were we were not moved. I
Speaker 1: think Jake saw that that half a mill was going
Speaker 1: to set him up separately, and I could see that right,
Speaker 1: But our attitude was not primarily money. We did talk
Speaker 1: music and we got an agreement between us by Monday
Speaker 1: to settle. He went and I had a paperwork with
Speaker 1: all the shares and all the business. If I could
Speaker 1: make it work for myself, I got everything and he
Speaker 1: went off to do whatever you want to do. He
Speaker 1: had money, but The other thing about Jake is he
Speaker 1: has excessive tastes, and I was quite happy that he
Speaker 1: should go and I paid for it. Okay, So he
Speaker 1: goes and the next step is the in Dury album.
Speaker 1: It is okay at this point, how many acts are
Speaker 1: signed to Stiff when Jake leaves? Probably about five? Okay.
Speaker 1: So you're the one who builds this big roster. Okay.
Speaker 1: So in Dury comes out, you know, hit me with
Speaker 1: your rhythm stick, wake Up, make love to Me? Does
Speaker 1: that meet your expectations? What a waste? Great single? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: I thought In Dury I had managed the Injury. He
Speaker 1: had been signed to my management company before Jake entered
Speaker 1: the picture right. In Dury was signed to Advancedale with
Speaker 1: Decla McManus, with Graham Parker and with a few other
Speaker 1: people at that time. So I thought the Injury album
Speaker 1: was ripe? Was ripe for your and and if if
Speaker 1: nothing else down the road, possibly America, but it would
Speaker 1: have to be it would have to come from England.
Speaker 1: It would have to be a swell because he incoherent.
Speaker 1: A lot of his stuff was very incoherent to the
Speaker 1: American market. What happens to the hundred odd k that
Speaker 1: you won't. We had forty grand in cash. I spent
Speaker 1: it on ads for Dury. Right in Drury. We had
Speaker 1: some great ads, give up smoking, give us your money.
Speaker 1: We had done fart before your ars is ready. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had some ads that really, you know, double page
Speaker 1: ads in everyone's face, and people had to hear this album.
Speaker 1: And then he came up with the singles. Him and
Speaker 1: Charles Jankl came up with the singles on top of
Speaker 1: the album incredible stuff. And I was a thirty three
Speaker 1: year old cripple who who had never kind of got out,
Speaker 1: he never really got going, and I thought he had
Speaker 1: the business. Uh So, as it proved, he sold records
Speaker 1: right across Europe, my aim is true, did well. Uh
Speaker 1: but he was bigger than America. Elvis was made for America,
Speaker 1: and he was bigger in America. Now, we had an
Speaker 1: attitude about the US market. Jake and I had an
Speaker 1: attitude which is, no matter how what you think you're
Speaker 1: gonna get, you're gonna get ten percent if you're lucky.
Speaker 1: That was the attitude because record companies, by their very nature,
Speaker 1: want to give you something to get you, but once
Speaker 1: they have you, they want to crawl it all back
Speaker 1: as much as possible. That's what the major did, Claude
Speaker 1: all back. We we wanted back packaging, in deductions, all
Speaker 1: the things that they can get. So we buided our
Speaker 1: time and eventually we did a deal for Stiff with Arista.
Speaker 1: Clive and I got on well. I thought he was
Speaker 1: very much a pop guy. He had total control of
Speaker 1: his company, and that was where we headed for once
Speaker 1: we got in going in the UK. Ian certainly, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm in Los Angeles, he gets played on k Rock,
Speaker 1: but you would get Ian on the way and then
Speaker 1: where do you go from there? Well, Ian and Lana Lovitch.
Speaker 1: Lana Lovitch was an unheralded young lady and her lucky
Speaker 1: number which went to number two in the UK UM
Speaker 1: At a certain time, we could have done a deal
Speaker 1: with Epic or Columbia, mainly Epic because Elvis was on
Speaker 1: Columbia and uh, but aristall looked good and they did
Speaker 1: pay us a big events and they look good because
Speaker 1: Clive wanted some kind of credibility. He wanted to be
Speaker 1: seen that he had an edgy He liked the edginess
Speaker 1: of Stiff, and he was going to he was going
Speaker 1: to do the business he was going to make it
Speaker 1: all happened big time, so he paid to put Ian
Speaker 1: on tour with Now there's for Alzheimer's is setting in
Speaker 1: um the vanilla? No, anyway, he will come back to me.
Speaker 1: He went on tour in America. Ian and Lena went
Speaker 1: on touring America and their two singles, hit Me with
Speaker 1: Your Rhythm Stick and Lucky Number, We're going up the
Speaker 1: chart with the bullets required, we were starting to look
Speaker 1: like we could turn out hits right stiff. So Clive
Speaker 1: came down to the bottom line. Uh Ian Jury played
Speaker 1: three nights at the bottom line at the end of
Speaker 1: this big club tour, you know the whiskey that kind
Speaker 1: of you know, hip club tour. The single was seventy
Speaker 1: hit Me with Your Rhythm Stick, and I think Lucky
Speaker 1: Number was eighty five or looking very good. So Clive
Speaker 1: came down at the end of the show with a
Speaker 1: boyfriend and a cameraman and said, look, Dave, I'm just
Speaker 1: going to I'm just gonna go in. I've been doing
Speaker 1: something else, but I'm just going to go in and
Speaker 1: do the Caught in the Act picture. Do you remember
Speaker 1: that picture in Billboard every week? Remember the Yeah? So
Speaker 1: he was going to be executive Meats group at bottom Line.
Speaker 1: Now I said to him, I said, Clive, you won't
Speaker 1: be able to rush in there. The band occasionally have
Speaker 1: a bit of a row and it's a very small
Speaker 1: dressing room and E will be very sweaty. He's very,
Speaker 1: very disabled and it takes him a while to get
Speaker 1: dressed and get him brain together. After I said, or
Speaker 1: they might have a row, I've been going. I went
Speaker 1: in there once where they were punching each other out anyway.
Speaker 1: Clive said, no, no, Dave, I do this all the time.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about it. You know I know how to
Speaker 1: do it. Ian had a guy called Cosmo Vinyl who
Speaker 1: is his mouthpiece. Cosmo went on to look after the clash.
Speaker 1: He was the mouthpiece and he was fascinated by Clive Davis.
Speaker 1: He taught Clive Davis his clothes were interesting. He was fascinated.
Speaker 1: He was in the dressing room. I'm saying to Clive,
Speaker 1: don't do it. Clive, I'm against the door, or don't
Speaker 1: do it. He's saying, Dave, it's easy. I do this
Speaker 1: all the time. So I said, okay, and you go. Clive.
Speaker 1: Clive hates been touched Cosmo was down his jacket looking
Speaker 1: at the label of his clothes. Cosmo was all over him,
Speaker 1: handling him right, not not not violently, but but you know,
Speaker 1: in his space, completely in his space. Clive, if you
Speaker 1: ever see the picture, he didn't look too well. The
Speaker 1: following day, Elliott Goldman, Elliot Goldman, Clive's business partner, calls
Speaker 1: me in to the office in New York and he says, so,
Speaker 1: I think it's a romance. I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: he's going to talk to me about how the records
Speaker 1: are doing and what needs to be done and whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, Elliot's going to talk business. And Elliot said
Speaker 1: to me, we're withdrawing all the promotion on your records.
Speaker 1: And I said, sorry, sorry, I thought it was a joke.
Speaker 1: Don't joke. I said, what's what's happening? He said, Clive
Speaker 1: was manhandled by your staff last night, and I'm pulling
Speaker 1: the whole deal. There's no promotion going on. I said,
Speaker 1: don't be ridiculous, you know, Elliott, you know it's just
Speaker 1: rock and roll, a little bit of rock and roll.
Speaker 1: I told Clive not to go in, but he wanted
Speaker 1: to do it. He's an adult. It's up to him,
Speaker 1: you know it's not my problem. They're not my staff.
Speaker 1: If you're going to go in groups dressing rooms, you
Speaker 1: better know that the group can bite, you know, so
Speaker 1: you're better go and do that. He said, it's not happening, Dave,
Speaker 1: where I said, well, then I want to leave. I
Speaker 1: want to leave now. I want to leave this instant.
Speaker 1: You know you're breaking You're breaking the contract. It's a
Speaker 1: big breach. Anyone, any lawyer will tell you, any judge
Speaker 1: will tell you. You You can't just pull out of this
Speaker 1: because of a little contra toempts over your bloody jacket.
Speaker 1: So he said, I'm doing some figures. Let you have
Speaker 1: them tomorrow, but if you want out, you'll have to
Speaker 1: buy your way out. And the following day he gave
Speaker 1: me a bill for nine hundred thousand dollars. Right, And
Speaker 1: the other thing he said to me with Bob, which
Speaker 1: is an interesting comment, he said, what you what you
Speaker 1: need to discover about the American industry record business is this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna fuck you now, and if you survive, you
Speaker 1: might get to fuck me later. So that was it.
Speaker 1: Now I was totally stuck. I was totally stuck. I
Speaker 1: didn't have that money. I didn't have anything. That money
Speaker 1: had been spent on various other quite a bit of
Speaker 1: it on various other things that were going on. So
Speaker 1: I had to go to Bruce Lumville at Epic and say, Bruce,
Speaker 1: I should have taken your deal. Those fucking idiots that
Speaker 1: Aristyle I can't understand them, but I need to take
Speaker 1: your deal, and I need an advance of nine hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and he gave it to me. Bruce Lumbo
Speaker 1: was a lovely fucking geither in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: So now you're on Epic. We moved along very swiftly there. Yeah, gone,
Speaker 1: but were good sailing after that? Yeah, it was pretty
Speaker 1: good if you think about it. It was They decided,
Speaker 1: which was rather nice, that they would put it on
Speaker 1: Epic Stiff. So there was a label called Epic Stiff
Speaker 1: and we put a lot of stuff out, but the
Speaker 1: momentum for the two biggest records that we had was gone.
Speaker 1: By the time we got all the parts and other
Speaker 1: bits from Arista. It was a couple of months and
Speaker 1: the records had had long gone, unfortunately, and they were
Speaker 1: two biggest shots. So we put out quite a bit
Speaker 1: on on Epic and we had a very good relationship
Speaker 1: with him, and Bruce Lumbo was really nice guind of
Speaker 1: a lot of really good staff there who I'm still
Speaker 1: in touch with. But are are we? We had we
Speaker 1: had missed the boat. We had missed the boat with
Speaker 1: that situation Asian and and that was that was the
Speaker 1: way that went. I mean in England. I signed Madness
Speaker 1: very soon after, right, and that was one of the
Speaker 1: biggest That was one of the biggest things around the
Speaker 1: world except for America, although our House with a Big
Speaker 1: Hit in on Sire in the US. Sire had them
Speaker 1: for the US. Anyway, the deal we made was Seymour
Speaker 1: and I got persuaded the band wanted to sign. I
Speaker 1: auditioned the band at my wedding, so my wife has
Speaker 1: never quite given me. And Seymour got them for America
Speaker 1: and our House with a Big Hit, but he didn't
Speaker 1: quite know what to do with them, their rowdy bunch
Speaker 1: and they're still going now and probably bigger now they've
Speaker 1: ever been. It's extraordinary the success of Madness. And what
Speaker 1: about all the other acts you signed, well, all the
Speaker 1: acts that I signed, Lana, the Pokes, Shane McGown and
Speaker 1: the Poles, they're all they all did well. About seventy
Speaker 1: of Stiff's signings broke even at least of my money.
Speaker 1: Because also the label taught them a culture of not
Speaker 1: spending their money, of looking after it, a bit of
Speaker 1: being a little bit sensible when it came to the money.
Speaker 1: We had. Devo, I mean, Devo was great fun We
Speaker 1: put out Devo's big records at the time. They were
Speaker 1: very funny because they they Jerry Casals was so he's
Speaker 1: such a winder, you know, he winge and wine and
Speaker 1: which he hated. We put him in a small hotel.
Speaker 1: He'd winge, winge, winge. People think that the record industry
Speaker 1: is not just a job. Here the things that it's
Speaker 1: some kind of romance, and you have to say to people, look,
Speaker 1: this is how it works. This is what it's about.
Speaker 1: The will come a day when did you did you
Speaker 1: put your money in the bank? Did you buyers ever house?
Speaker 1: And you've got something for it, you know, a pub?
Speaker 1: So uh that that was the essence. My mistake, Bob
Speaker 1: was Ireland before you get thail and I have to
Speaker 1: ask you about a couple of these records. One and
Speaker 1: I saw the act at the Whiskey. How does Rachel Sweet,
Speaker 1: end Up It's stiff. Rachel's Sweet came from a Devo situation.
Speaker 1: I was in New York and I played Chris Blackwell
Speaker 1: Satisfaction by Divo, and he almost exploded. He couldn't believe,
Speaker 1: like I couldn't, that they had come up with this
Speaker 1: version of this song. I mean, it was extraordinary. I
Speaker 1: loved I loved all the rest of their song, but
Speaker 1: that was extraordinary. And he said to me, We're in
Speaker 1: New York, and I think New York was quite warm.
Speaker 1: I remember being in a T shirt and he said
Speaker 1: to me, so, so what are you doing Nowaday, What's
Speaker 1: what's happening. I said, I'm into Akron. I've got to Acron,
Speaker 1: Ohio to sign Devo. He said, what he said, I'll
Speaker 1: come with you. We we we had a friendship at
Speaker 1: that point, you know, such a but we didn't have
Speaker 1: a business arrangement. So he and I went to Akron
Speaker 1: and it was the biggest blizzard in the history of Acron, right,
Speaker 1: and we were both in T shirts. We just got
Speaker 1: on a plane. He was in sandals. So we we
Speaker 1: tied ourselves up in a motel and the bands and
Speaker 1: all the the word went out of the Chris Blackwell
Speaker 1: and Dave Robinson. Probably Chris Blackwell was in town and
Speaker 1: all the bands to bogging to this motel. They all came,
Speaker 1: none of them great, none of them. A guy called
Speaker 1: Lean Sternberg, who wrote Walk like an Egyptian came from
Speaker 1: out of the blue. He came and he had various connections,
Speaker 1: and I got the idea. I got devoted. They wouldn't
Speaker 1: sign a deal with me, but they signed the three
Speaker 1: singles with me because they were They had Virgin and
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers on tap and Jerry Gasels is going to
Speaker 1: make a fortune. So I left him to it. I said,
Speaker 1: I'll put out your singles and then that will make
Speaker 1: him want to have you. Blah blah blah. Blackwell went
Speaker 1: back to town and Jerry Lee Sternberg brought all these bands,
Speaker 1: one of which was Rachel Sweet, Jane eyre various, and
Speaker 1: I got the idea of Acron was kind of going downhill.
Speaker 1: It had been the tire factory that that it had
Speaker 1: been a huge place. It also smelt of rubber. It
Speaker 1: smelt of really a lot of rubber. So I came
Speaker 1: up and maybe maybe in an alcohol driven evening, with
Speaker 1: the idea that I would put out an Acron album.
Speaker 1: Right of these bands, whatever thing I said this, remember
Speaker 1: you get a track by each of them, put it
Speaker 1: on the album. I want to try out a thing
Speaker 1: called scratch and sniff, so we'll put the smell of
Speaker 1: rubber that you scratched on on thing. And it gave
Speaker 1: you that kind of thing, and that was the essence
Speaker 1: of Acron. So I got that idea there, and then
Speaker 1: in a blizzard in Akron and we put out with
Speaker 1: album and Rachel Sweet came with it. And she was
Speaker 1: a very interesting little fifteen year old. She was very
Speaker 1: her mother had just died and and she but she
Speaker 1: was very driven and very very interesting. And I had
Speaker 1: this song Baby. I had that song Baby was hanging
Speaker 1: around somewhere in my things that we did it with her.
Speaker 1: Her father, Dick Sweet, was you know, a nice man
Speaker 1: bathroom bathroom, salesman bathroom, and the mother had just died,
Speaker 1: so he was kind of clinging to his fifteen year
Speaker 1: old daughter and her sister who was seventeen, so it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of a very odd emotional thing.
Speaker 1: I felt for them, but there's nothing I could do.
Speaker 1: I'm just running a record company. So we put her
Speaker 1: on I decided to put her on the next tour.
Speaker 1: Um Dick. Dick thought that rock and roll was where
Speaker 1: you you sang louder at the microphone. That was that
Speaker 1: was That was his essence of things down the road.
Speaker 1: After a couple of tours, and she did very well.
Speaker 1: She's very articulate. She's now, I believe, a TV producer.
Speaker 1: She she's got a career in that area. Arma and
Speaker 1: at one of the Sony companies really liked Rachel Sweet
Speaker 1: and he was hustling me to get a license for America.
Speaker 1: And I said, look, Arma, I had now had an
Speaker 1: experience of Dick Sweet close up for several months and
Speaker 1: it was doing right. And he's the father and you came.
Speaker 1: He doesn't know what he's doing, but he wants to
Speaker 1: be the manager or whatever. She's very nice, Rachel. So
Speaker 1: armor I said, Arma, I'll tell you what. Let's do
Speaker 1: a deal. You can buy her whole contract. You can
Speaker 1: buy the whole contract and um, you know she she
Speaker 1: wants She and her father want to have an American label.
Speaker 1: Stiff doesn't suit them. They're very straight and they want
Speaker 1: to be in an America. So you buy the whole
Speaker 1: contract forget just America, and so he did. He bought
Speaker 1: the contract, and I kept Dick Sweet away from him
Speaker 1: untill he un till the check went through the bank.
Speaker 1: And then I said, Arma, meet the manager Dick Sweet,
Speaker 1: and Armor about a year later, said you wanchor, you
Speaker 1: complete you. You should be banned from this business for
Speaker 1: doing that to me. We still get on. So okay,
Speaker 1: there's a full story of Rachel Sweet. So tell us
Speaker 1: about the mistake of making your deal with Ireland. Chris
Speaker 1: Blackwell kept hustling me in the back end of a
Speaker 1: D three. We had Madness really good, we had Tracy
Speaker 1: Ullman really good. We had the No, we didn't have
Speaker 1: the Pops at the time, but we had a good
Speaker 1: business and I had money in the bank and we
Speaker 1: had a good turnover and we were doing very well.
Speaker 1: And Blackwell is on the phone saying, why don't you come, Dave.
Speaker 1: I'll buy half of your company and you come and
Speaker 1: run Ireland. And I said no, No. I genuinely said no, no, Chris,
Speaker 1: I don't you know. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: You know, I like things the way they are. We're
Speaker 1: doing well. I've got some new stuff for next year.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh. So he kept on and on, and
Speaker 1: eventually he offered me two million dollars for half of Stiff.
Speaker 1: He went by half. We had barious discussions. We also
Speaker 1: he said, I'm going to sell Island in three years.
Speaker 1: Why don't we put the two companies together, one Pop
Speaker 1: one pop interesting, one Island traditional with a catalog, and
Speaker 1: why don't we get rid of it? And he gave
Speaker 1: me a very very big for the sale. I was
Speaker 1: going to get a very big override, very big, okay,
Speaker 1: but I would work both companies. So I talked to
Speaker 1: the wife and she said, well, Dave, you know how
Speaker 1: long did these things last. It's an opportunity. You may
Speaker 1: as well. You're giving away half and you've got the
Speaker 1: opportunity of building some more and maybe you can make
Speaker 1: a bigger day down the road. So I did it.
Speaker 1: And the first month I got in there, they had
Speaker 1: no money. They were broke. I learned them money A
Speaker 1: million dollars. Stiff lent Island to pay its salaries for
Speaker 1: two months. So I looked into Ireland completely from beginning
Speaker 1: to end right, and I found that a it had
Speaker 1: a license in America, it hadn't paid any royalties to
Speaker 1: the UK company for ages and it had a license
Speaker 1: with Atlantic, and it had seventy staff on a license.
Speaker 1: The license was not huge, it was decent, but there's
Speaker 1: no way you run seventy people on a license of
Speaker 1: a company whose day is kind of done. You're gonna
Speaker 1: have to revitalize. And because it's financially stuck. The people
Speaker 1: through the door, Bob usually are artists managers. When when
Speaker 1: a new person comes in town, the artist manager come
Speaker 1: because they want to know if you're going to tour them,
Speaker 1: if you're going to support them, if you that's what
Speaker 1: normally happens. I had nothing but creditors, right, creditors through
Speaker 1: the thing. Say David, you're gonna be able to turn
Speaker 1: this around because my bill is really high. And they're
Speaker 1: the same people who are manufacturing from me. You know
Speaker 1: they're they're similar. I said, no, I think we can.
Speaker 1: So I was in New York December and I saw
Speaker 1: a twelve inch Now Trevor Horne and I had known
Speaker 1: each other for a long time, and I was aware
Speaker 1: of Frankie Goes to Hollywood because they were quite outrageous.
Speaker 1: It's quite outrageous carry on their record, and I said,
Speaker 1: I became aware that I was watching them and they
Speaker 1: stalled in the British chart something like that. But I
Speaker 1: was in New York and I saw this twelve inch
Speaker 1: that said sex Mix Frankie goes to Hollywood. I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know about that. That's amazing. So we need
Speaker 1: to push this band on quickly. They've got a chance.
Speaker 1: This record is quite good, actually it's quite extraordinary, but
Speaker 1: it's not going anywhere. So I called somebody in New York.
Speaker 1: I found out who was the production manager. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to start like I'm blowing my trumpet, but
Speaker 1: inevitably you kind of do. And I said to him,
Speaker 1: I need five thousands of those twelve inches across to
Speaker 1: the UK in a few days, right, can you can
Speaker 1: you deliver? And he said who are you? I don't
Speaker 1: know who you are. No, I don't think I can deliver.
Speaker 1: Capacity is blah blah blah blah. And they gave me
Speaker 1: a load of welly. So I called black Bell. I said,
Speaker 1: Black I'm not going to do this job if I
Speaker 1: don't get five thousand and those things on on Saturday morning, right,
Speaker 1: and I want that geezer to fucking deliver to them, right.
Speaker 1: So I got them and we spread it out over Christmas,
Speaker 1: the sex mix the twelve inch and the record zoomed
Speaker 1: from sixty five to thirty two and got on top
Speaker 1: of the pops. Now you know, top of the pops
Speaker 1: that is, that is where you want to get in
Speaker 1: the world. In the UK, we got on top of
Speaker 1: the pops. The band played with no arts in their trousers.
Speaker 1: They wore those kind of chaps, those kind of gay chaps.
Speaker 1: That that whatever they got. The guy the BBC freaked
Speaker 1: out completely and of course the entire public went miniachel
Speaker 1: next thing, it goes to number six, thirty two, number six.
Speaker 1: I know the guy is saying, I'll never have an
Speaker 1: act on top of the pubs forever. Number six. And
Speaker 1: that day a guy called Mike Reid, who is the
Speaker 1: breakfast DJ on Radio one, biggest radio station in the UK,
Speaker 1: plays a little bit of the record, pulls it off
Speaker 1: the needle and throws it at the wall. So there's
Speaker 1: this big splatter let's splatter whatever. Everyone's going, what's happening
Speaker 1: because everybody listens to that breakfast show. And then I
Speaker 1: get the head of the BBC said, day, were are
Speaker 1: we're banning it? I said, how can you? Banny you've
Speaker 1: been playing it for three months, not a lot, but enough.
Speaker 1: What's the problem, he said, It's all about ejaculation. I said,
Speaker 1: I said most of the chart. I could describe ejaculationship
Speaker 1: most of the chart. What are you talking about? This
Speaker 1: is the rock and roll business. I said. The least
Speaker 1: you could do is tell the press while you're banning it,
Speaker 1: he said, he said, I will. I said, well, I've
Speaker 1: got to. I could get a pressure reception for this afternoon.
Speaker 1: He said, okay, I'll address them. He told the assembled press.
Speaker 1: We had I think seventy eight people in that room,
Speaker 1: that it was all about ejaculation. We we couldn't press
Speaker 1: the record, we couldn't get pressing. And then I found
Speaker 1: that you could change the track two or three times,
Speaker 1: and and everybody wanted the next version of the ejaculation record.
Speaker 1: We sold I don't know, three and a half million
Speaker 1: in the UK. It was number one for ever it was.
Speaker 1: You know, we had the T shirt. Then relax, don't
Speaker 1: do it. I mean it was a script you could
Speaker 1: not write. And ted beston God bless him. The head
Speaker 1: of the BBC was the man who did it all
Speaker 1: by himself. So we sorted that out Chris Blackwell now
Speaker 1: has got a little cash flow. We're cash flowing right,
Speaker 1: And the next thing is the Bob Marley record. Chris said,
Speaker 1: I'd like you to do a Bob Marley A Greatest Hits, Dave.
Speaker 1: We haven't done one before, but I think you're the
Speaker 1: right man to do it. And I said, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I I really like Bob Marley. I've got an idea
Speaker 1: and how that goes. He said, well, I've got the
Speaker 1: cover done and I've got the running order. And I said,
Speaker 1: well then let's have a look. So he had a
Speaker 1: look at I said I wouldn't use that cover and
Speaker 1: I wouldn't use that running order. And he said what
Speaker 1: do you mean? And I said, well, what's the point
Speaker 1: of the of wasting time? That's not the one, okay,
Speaker 1: And there's no point in two of us fighting about it.
Speaker 1: You do it, you do it. You've got the ideas
Speaker 1: that you do it. So eventually he agreed. I said,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do it with you. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna do it anybody. I will do it, and I
Speaker 1: have an idea that that will work. So the idea
Speaker 1: of bottom line was to sell it to the white people.
Speaker 1: That's all I said, the man is a genius. The
Speaker 1: man has got songs that are unbelievable. But the man
Speaker 1: is provocative. And all the pictures you've used of them,
Speaker 1: he's wearing camouflage clothes, he's wearing military clothes. People in
Speaker 1: England and around the world think he doesn't like white people.
Speaker 1: He does. But the pictures that you've used to describe
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't have it. So that's where we that's
Speaker 1: where we drew the line, and you know, the rest
Speaker 1: is kind of history. So how did it in? That's
Speaker 1: alves that that's all of the cash flow. That's alved.
Speaker 1: The cash flow I did so TV on YouTube. But
Speaker 1: most of Ireland's bands were leaving at that point. Robert
Speaker 1: Palmer was going, Stevie Winwood was going because they hadn't
Speaker 1: been paid royalty. So hided end with you in Ireland
Speaker 1: very badly, very badly because the following I put a
Speaker 1: lot of effort into Ireland because of the arrangement that
Speaker 1: were black Wood and I had ah that isn't what
Speaker 1: he thought was going on or his people. He wasn't
Speaker 1: going to sell. He now didn't need to sell because
Speaker 1: I had recovered the position that he had vacated and
Speaker 1: now he got He then sold a company, if you
Speaker 1: think about it, to David vine At, a PolyGram who
Speaker 1: bought A and M and Ireland and paid ridiculous amount
Speaker 1: of money. He gave the Black World three and eighty
Speaker 1: million or something. You know, it's probably worth fifty at
Speaker 1: the time. But we fell out because also his people
Speaker 1: didn't pay stiff bills. There was a do we were
Speaker 1: a partnership, the accounts department all moved into Ireland, everything
Speaker 1: every we cut back and did all the things that
Speaker 1: people do, and he double cross me. And then what
Speaker 1: about didn't you have a contract for your percentage? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had a contract written on a filefax page and
Speaker 1: we went to court with it and it was going
Speaker 1: to cost an awful lot of money. I mean, Blackwell's
Speaker 1: lawyer called my lawyer and said, look, Chris has just
Speaker 1: sold a company for two and eight nine million, as
Speaker 1: Dave got the wherewith all to get into a long
Speaker 1: drawn out legal litigation. So we fought a bit of
Speaker 1: a draw. I got a bit out of it, but
Speaker 1: not what was required. And of course the sale of
Speaker 1: the companies never took place, and Chris went into the
Speaker 1: hotel business. Okay, you leave Ireland in where does that
Speaker 1: leave you? It meant that everybody then a wombed that
Speaker 1: that Stiff would be hard to keep going. So a
Speaker 1: lot of people then tried to think about to get
Speaker 1: their two hundred dollars or whatever they were owned. And
Speaker 1: in England, the way the way that works, it's snowballs.
Speaker 1: It's a snowballing situation. So I did a liquidation. I
Speaker 1: liquidated the company and sold it to mt T so
Speaker 1: that it was sailable, right, But it wasn't ideal. It
Speaker 1: wasn't something that you would write down as your script whatever. Okay,
Speaker 1: you sold it z T T. Was that profitable for you?
Speaker 1: Did you finally get a check? No? No, it's profitable
Speaker 1: for the some of the creditors they got a small
Speaker 1: amount of the company was wound up and they got
Speaker 1: a small amount of the owing. No, it wasn't profitable.
Speaker 1: I was the biggest creditor in the company. No, I
Speaker 1: I lost what I put in. I put a lot
Speaker 1: into try and of a guy, So what year do
Speaker 1: you give the assets? And then what do you do personally? Well?
Speaker 1: I worked for Stiff for a while until the until
Speaker 1: the Pope single which I signed the Pope, so until
Speaker 1: the Fairytale in New York, and then I I dropped
Speaker 1: out because Jill Sinclair, who is Trevor Horne's wife, I
Speaker 1: was unfortunately she was killed. She was chiseling away at
Speaker 1: the bits that I had. So I thought, I've had
Speaker 1: enough of it for a while. My wife and I
Speaker 1: thought we will take a little time off and gone
Speaker 1: do something fun. So one has occupied your time in
Speaker 1: these past years. I put together and I hope to
Speaker 1: get that out next year. Gregory Isaac's credits hits called
Speaker 1: Icon and that's I think a great record. He wasn't
Speaker 1: quite the Bob Marley, but he had some great records,
Speaker 1: a great voice. And I look after a small band
Speaker 1: from a young band from Carlisle and called Hardwick Circus,
Speaker 1: and they're doing things, and they're starting to do things,
Speaker 1: and we're starting to get somewhere. So I'm still in it.
Speaker 1: I'm still doing it. I have a lot of fun
Speaker 1: doing it, and I do um you know, various bits
Speaker 1: in the industry, and you know, corporate with several projects
Speaker 1: like the Greatest Hits and things of that nature, which
Speaker 1: I'm good at. I have to ask because a long career,
Speaker 1: I know this is not what you're in for it.
Speaker 1: So with this lead, d did you make enough money
Speaker 1: or do you have to work to pay the bills? Oh? No,
Speaker 1: I have to work, Bob. Yeah, and you never retire.
Speaker 1: It's not you know, what would you do? Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: when when I got Brinday Schwartz to be their support
Speaker 1: band on the Wings tour of the UK. You know,
Speaker 1: I did a big three day debrief with Paul at
Speaker 1: the back of the coach and I said, so have
Speaker 1: you done enough? What are you? What are you going
Speaker 1: to do? What's the plan? What he said, Dave, you
Speaker 1: never retire because you're as successful as you can be.
Speaker 1: But what are you? I'm a bass player? What do
Speaker 1: you do? I said, well, I'm a kind of a manager.
Speaker 1: He said, well, we'll both be doing that until we die. Okay.
Speaker 1: Just going back in history one point, how long were
Speaker 1: you involved with Graham Parker? Graham Parker from UM nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five to nineteen seventy eight, maybe seventy nine. Okay,
Speaker 1: So were you involved with him when he signed ultimately
Speaker 1: with Arista? Was that after your time? I did the
Speaker 1: deal for him and left at that point. Okay, So
Speaker 1: Graham Parker. He had the first two albums made an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of notice. He blames that our Mercury, which
Speaker 1: certainly in America, was a terrible label. Do you think
Speaker 1: it was just luck of the draw it didn't happen
Speaker 1: for him or really in essence, he didn't have it
Speaker 1: and it wasn't gonna happen in big time. There was
Speaker 1: a great momentum for a Graham. There was a great
Speaker 1: momentum uh at the time when he was playing in
Speaker 1: New York in the early Palladium period with Bruce Springsteen
Speaker 1: in the audience and Steve van zandt. He was at
Speaker 1: the height of his thing. He was he was ready
Speaker 1: to crack it. Mercury were appalling. They had no real interests.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any interest in filling it. But that's
Speaker 1: and that's his story. They just did not understand what
Speaker 1: it took to break a rock act in America. You
Speaker 1: had to climb on it, You had to climb on
Speaker 1: that bus and do it. They had a great guy
Speaker 1: and Mike Bone was a radio plugger. He was very good.
Speaker 1: But the marketing and the expenditure was it was non existent.
Speaker 1: Really it was. It was poor and they had no attitude.
Speaker 1: It was very much a jazz label, you know. And
Speaker 1: the guys that ran it. I'll tell you an interesting story.
Speaker 1: There was a guy called There's a guy from barn In. I.
Speaker 1: I raised this big time right into polygraph right. I
Speaker 1: raised it right up to the top of the cheese right.
Speaker 1: And they sent a guy who remained nameless at this
Speaker 1: point to Chicago, and they paid my fare to go
Speaker 1: back to Chicago with him for for me to point
Speaker 1: out what had happened, what hadn't happened, what should have happened.
Speaker 1: It's a very delicate situation. It happens in managers careers
Speaker 1: from time to time when they don't want to they
Speaker 1: need to get some action and it needs to be quick.
Speaker 1: And they understood that. When we had a lunch, when
Speaker 1: we had the dinner that evening, we all arrived, he
Speaker 1: from Holland, me from whatever. There was a girl, very
Speaker 1: pretty girl, introduced to me as the head of regional promotion.
Speaker 1: I had never seen her before. I asked Mike Bone
Speaker 1: and he kind of his eyes to heaven a little bit.
Speaker 1: This girl was seated next to my gentleman from Holland,
Speaker 1: Mr Holland right, and the following day, the Mr Holland
Speaker 1: went back to Holland and I had checked at the
Speaker 1: hotel and the girl had been in his room that night,
Speaker 1: and it was all over. He was moved to Australia
Speaker 1: thereafter by PolyGram. Right, and it was all over. And
Speaker 1: Barnes said, we've investigated this. Our man says, there's no
Speaker 1: one toward you know, it's it's a chancy business, Dave.
Speaker 1: And we had a chance, and maybe we didn't. But
Speaker 1: Graham had such a such a very keen wave. He
Speaker 1: had such a keen wave, and he had some very
Speaker 1: very good tracks. Right. He had mud Langer, had done
Speaker 1: the second album Nicklaud, the first mud Langer, and the
Speaker 1: third was Squeezing Out Spark. I mean, people really love.
Speaker 1: He had all the ingredients. But unfortunately it's the momentum
Speaker 1: of the record business is that you seize the opportunities
Speaker 1: they come and then they can go and like a
Speaker 1: lot of other things. So mercury poisoning is a very
Speaker 1: relevant part of why Graham, it turned out, then changed
Speaker 1: his mind a little bit. He went off into slightly
Speaker 1: different directions. He also went a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of groups. And you know this, they they they always
Speaker 1: need help and good from the management, and they need
Speaker 1: they need people who are objective about them. And the
Speaker 1: day you drop the objectivity is silly. The day that
Speaker 1: an artist is then asked to be the picker of
Speaker 1: the singles or the picker of the producer or whatever.
Speaker 1: I've never been a big fan with that. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I'm not autocratic. I tell the group why
Speaker 1: this is the situation, on what could and should happen.
Speaker 1: I try and be the artist's friend as well as
Speaker 1: their record company, their partner. Most contracts say we are
Speaker 1: not partners and we never will be. I always said,
Speaker 1: I'm your partner. I will try and find the key
Speaker 1: to the door. If you support me, I will be
Speaker 1: with you. And Graham, unfortunately, was the back end of that.
Speaker 1: It's a shame because if you look at some of
Speaker 1: the stuff he has done and look at some of
Speaker 1: those early videos, I mean you're looking at a hit
Speaker 1: at a hit act. Also, you know the wave, the
Speaker 1: wave moved and the punk kind of started coming up.
Speaker 1: Elvis Costello came, Bruce Springsteen started getting him seven gear,
Speaker 1: and Mercury denied Graham when he had a chance. Well, Dave,
Speaker 1: you're a fount of knowledge, with a lot of great stories.
Speaker 1: I can listen to them forever. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you for taking the time with us today. Good bomb,
Speaker 1: but I've read in going to more until next time.
Speaker 1: This is bob Blefslin's