Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is manager extraordinaire Scott Roger, who looks after
Speaker 1: such acts as Paul McCartney, Shania Twain Andrea Bocelli. Scott,
Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Thank you, Bald,
Speaker 1: nice to see you and hear you actually tell me
Speaker 1: who you're looking over completely in your management roster. Now, boy,
Speaker 1: we get a bunch of young development offists, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's something that i'd straight away from for a
Speaker 1: few years and really go back into. You know, we
Speaker 1: just signed just under a year ago that young twenty
Speaker 1: year old from Nashville coach Celia Castleman, who's working with
Speaker 1: Daniel Glass. Um. We did the album with Dona was
Speaker 1: in l A which was great with Peter and Palladino
Speaker 1: enable Boreal as her backing band. She plays guitar, so
Speaker 1: we made an and we just went a minute album.
Speaker 1: This is a kid who hasn't released a single thing.
Speaker 1: There's no social media. Well, well let's go back to
Speaker 1: the very beginning since we're going into detail. How did
Speaker 1: you find her? Daniel Glass? He emailed me and says,
Speaker 1: I found this girl. I think you might be interested
Speaker 1: in working with We just signed there and he sent
Speaker 1: the music and I thought it was great, and we
Speaker 1: arranged a zoom because this is still you know, through COVID,
Speaker 1: and she was so good. She played the song She's
Speaker 1: in the bedroom in her mom's house, UM, and I
Speaker 1: thought it was so good. I flew to Nashville about
Speaker 1: a week later to sit down with her to see
Speaker 1: if it was a real deal. And she's legitimately the
Speaker 1: real deal. Alison Cross found her because she knew her
Speaker 1: father her father, and then Allison referred her to her attorney,
Speaker 1: who looks after her own career. And then from there,
Speaker 1: the attorney sort of brought in publishing in label UM
Speaker 1: and we just jumped in and made an album. She
Speaker 1: had about forty so so we're gonna launch the first
Speaker 1: song in March. Daniel was telling me about this and
Speaker 1: telling me that he was putting a lot of money
Speaker 1: into the recording, more than usual. Was that your perspective, Yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: because he he just signed it to little development EP
Speaker 1: deal and then everything naturally fell into place, you know,
Speaker 1: like we thought, can we make this a bit more
Speaker 1: of a story. You know, the way records used to
Speaker 1: be made, you know, instead of just going locally with
Speaker 1: some young natural producer, make a very nice record, no
Speaker 1: real story behind this. We took a time. We spent
Speaker 1: a good six months, and I sent a few tracks
Speaker 1: to Dawn because he's a friend, and and it was
Speaker 1: actually it's a serious recommendation. She's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: i'd love Done Wars. I'm like, you're twenty. How do
Speaker 1: you even know who Done War? Was it? You know? Um?
Speaker 1: But she's such an old soul. And I sent him
Speaker 1: to Dawn and don't call me the next day and
Speaker 1: he's like, how do you find these people? You know?
Speaker 1: This is amazing? Is this she really this good? He
Speaker 1: was kind of blown away by it. She can't be
Speaker 1: this good. I never do new projects ever, you know.
Speaker 1: And and that's where the conversation stuff. Cecilia went to
Speaker 1: meet Don, who was in Detroit at the time, and
Speaker 1: they hit it off and he's like, let's just do
Speaker 1: the album. And from there you pool every favor young artists,
Speaker 1: low budget, the team enhanced the studios who I love
Speaker 1: Farrel who who runs the studio. She went, oh, we'll
Speaker 1: well we'll cut your deal. You know, we've got this time,
Speaker 1: and this time we'll do half rights. She made so
Speaker 1: many friends, she got she'd never left Nashville. She went
Speaker 1: to l A with her mom, started recording John Mayer's
Speaker 1: there the first day and she texts me sure, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, I'm just make John Mayer. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: I love John Mayr. He's so amazing. And John Mayer's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to use any of my guitars, you know,
Speaker 1: feel free just come in and help yourself, you know.
Speaker 1: And the whole sessions ended up being like that, to
Speaker 1: the point where Fario, who runs the studio, is like
Speaker 1: being my husband. We love her. If she ever need
Speaker 1: to spend time in l A, she can stay at
Speaker 1: our house. Everyone had met her, just felling up us girl.
Speaker 1: So it all felt very natural. Even though Daniel spent
Speaker 1: a bit more than he wanted to, it all felt
Speaker 1: really natural. Okay, so now the record is done in
Speaker 1: a completely changed world. What are the next steps? How
Speaker 1: do you make people aware of her? How do you
Speaker 1: grow her career? This? You know this, this used to
Speaker 1: be when I was a kid, This is this was
Speaker 1: the job. How do you find a new artist and
Speaker 1: how do you break them? And times have changed over
Speaker 1: thirty years or so since I've been doing this. It's
Speaker 1: no longer the same as the hustle is different. Everything
Speaker 1: is different. She's got to find friends at DSPs. We
Speaker 1: gotta literally old school and get her in a car
Speaker 1: and drive around and go and do little sessions and
Speaker 1: go on do you know whatever radio that we can
Speaker 1: get her into, just to try and get some music
Speaker 1: out there, start working on social presence and do some videos,
Speaker 1: just real least get content out there. We hope we'll
Speaker 1: get some support from not only YouTube, but Apple and Spotify, Amazon,
Speaker 1: just to stead of giving a little poosh, give a
Speaker 1: little profile, get her own some appropriate playlists. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not country. She's from Nashville, but it's not country.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's got a real modern feel to it.
Speaker 1: But she could you know, she's so influenced by people
Speaker 1: like Steve Nicks and Fluwood, Macs of the world, and
Speaker 1: it's got that a bit of that flavor. This record
Speaker 1: could have been made in n Yeah, yeah, yeah. You
Speaker 1: can tell the technology that's in there that it's made today.
Speaker 1: So as you say, you know, the business really changed
Speaker 1: in this century with the advent of the Internet. Give
Speaker 1: me the hierarchy of and this includes both old acts
Speaker 1: and brand new acts, and they may not be identical.
Speaker 1: What has the most power and exposing an act the
Speaker 1: most power and exposing an act if you and again
Speaker 1: as you said, whether you're a brand new office or
Speaker 1: you're the most established office, most successful artist, what has
Speaker 1: the most power? I think it changes was genre, Bob,
Speaker 1: And you know this. You've been a music fan, you know,
Speaker 1: your entire life. And when when you think when you
Speaker 1: were fifteen years old to twenty years old, you loved
Speaker 1: whatever was popular. Whoever that was, was the Stones and
Speaker 1: the Beatles, and who was it Led zeppel In, the
Speaker 1: Symphonies or whatever it was. The biggest music throughout every
Speaker 1: era has been pop music, same as today. You know,
Speaker 1: the most of the biggest consumers of teenagers and young people,
Speaker 1: they're the ones who consume all the Drake or Kanye
Speaker 1: or Taylor Swift or or you know anything that's huge.
Speaker 1: It just they just need to put a song out
Speaker 1: and it goes. It just goes. It's got a life
Speaker 1: of its own. As soon as they drop. They tell
Speaker 1: everyone on social media, you track dropping today, and it
Speaker 1: just goes. They have their own legs. But then that's
Speaker 1: pop music throughout the ages. You know, everyone would wait
Speaker 1: for the new big thing. And again it could have
Speaker 1: been anything through any era pop music because its always
Speaker 1: been the biggest music. It's probably consumed ninety plus percent
Speaker 1: of the world's music market, pretty similar today. So to
Speaker 1: put an artice who isn't in that genre, they could
Speaker 1: be a rock band, they could be sort of a
Speaker 1: more independent type, you know, avant garde style band or
Speaker 1: or singer. Um. They don't have the mass consumption that
Speaker 1: pop music has. We still need to support of the
Speaker 1: Amazon's Spotify is all the DSPs, But that's not answering
Speaker 1: your questions, like is there one thing. I don't think
Speaker 1: there is one thing. It seems to be the sum
Speaker 1: of a thousand different small things that only to be
Speaker 1: happening at the same time. But more importantly than that,
Speaker 1: it's like when you're socializing with friends, family, or having
Speaker 1: a cup of coffee with someone just catching up, you'll
Speaker 1: talk about things like great movie, you've just seen a
Speaker 1: great series, and you know what, what have you been
Speaker 1: listening to? Uh? What book of you just youve got
Speaker 1: to read this book. It's amazing. The word of mouth
Speaker 1: is so important. And what I find is with every artist,
Speaker 1: I work with because I don't really work with the
Speaker 1: young pop artists, the artists that I wish I worked
Speaker 1: with a Taylor Swift or a Drake or you know
Speaker 1: one of those arts where you just drop Beyonce, that
Speaker 1: you drop a song and it just goes boom and
Speaker 1: that's the job is done. But I don't work with
Speaker 1: anyone like that. So it's how do you get in
Speaker 1: the conversation? You know, I find that's the most important
Speaker 1: thing because if you're you know, you're sitting having sort
Speaker 1: of lunch with three or four friends, and if you're
Speaker 1: in that conversation, did you see the new video by whoever?
Speaker 1: Did you hear that new song? It's incredible? Or did
Speaker 1: you see something that they did whatever was creative and marketing,
Speaker 1: the visual, the artwork, Oh the artwork was done by Stone,
Speaker 1: So isn't that amazing? How did that happen? How do
Speaker 1: you get in the conversation, whatever way in you're gonna take,
Speaker 1: you have to be in the conversation with the brand
Speaker 1: new act. What is it like with your interaction with
Speaker 1: the DSPs? What are you looking for from them? What
Speaker 1: do you want in a perfect world? Well, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think all of the DSPs, it's like the old
Speaker 1: kidney candy store analogy. You know you love candy, you
Speaker 1: walk in the candy store, you have no idea what
Speaker 1: you want to have, and DSPs feel like that. For
Speaker 1: most people. You're very different and very different. I know
Speaker 1: exactly what I wanted to want to go in there.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, it's still good to find things
Speaker 1: on curative playlists that you may not have known but
Speaker 1: you actually like, and it's been a great way to discover.
Speaker 1: I think most people are still of the playlist mentality.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like a genre music, so they're quite
Speaker 1: happy to listen to playlists that features that genre, whatever
Speaker 1: that genre happens to be. So I think for new
Speaker 1: artists the playlist concept is so vital. It's a great
Speaker 1: way to introduce someone who's never going to go in
Speaker 1: that store and choose your song. You've got to present
Speaker 1: it to. Okay, let's go a little bit deeper in
Speaker 1: the weeds. You're talking to one of these uh streaming companies.
Speaker 1: How hard is it to get on a playlist? How
Speaker 1: many playlists will they put you on? And then there's
Speaker 1: issues of you know, save rates, tell us you know
Speaker 1: how you get to the point where you have some traction.
Speaker 1: This is where it becomes a global issue because you know,
Speaker 1: the great playlists in France or Germany, or Italy or
Speaker 1: Sweden or Australia very different to what they are in
Speaker 1: the UK or the US. Every country is that localized.
Speaker 1: Don't one the playlists. So it ends up being a
Speaker 1: task that you got to go around the world exactly
Speaker 1: excuse me as we're doing now on Zoom. You know,
Speaker 1: we do constantly we're on zooms with territory of the
Speaker 1: territory of the territory and trying to find out what
Speaker 1: they need to do, what they you know, to in
Speaker 1: order to achieve set up in these art results. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they may want to bring us in
Speaker 1: from management on a call with a Spotify or an
Speaker 1: Apple or whoever happens to be or a Deezer, and
Speaker 1: you know, all all these companies, and it's trying to
Speaker 1: find your friends, find people who actually believe in the artist.
Speaker 1: Then they want to help. It's it's it's it's like
Speaker 1: you're doing the sales pitch. And for the most part,
Speaker 1: you know, we have a lot of friends now in
Speaker 1: these companies and we can go to these friends and
Speaker 1: try and ask them for support because they know we're established.
Speaker 1: What we have is legitimate. We're not coming in cold,
Speaker 1: We're coming in with a track record, and we sort
Speaker 1: of not asking for the world. We'll try and isolate
Speaker 1: where we want to be. Can we can you please
Speaker 1: just try and get us on this. We know we're
Speaker 1: not going to get music Friday on Spotify for example.
Speaker 1: You know that may be further down the line, but
Speaker 1: initially it's like, let's see where we need to place
Speaker 1: this artist. Let's isolate the key playlist that we feel
Speaker 1: would be appropriate. Then we've got to try and get
Speaker 1: on them. Some of those playlists are curated by the company.
Speaker 1: Some of those playlists are curated by individuals you know,
Speaker 1: And then that's where you need to label help because
Speaker 1: a lot of the time they know a lot of
Speaker 1: these people because they've solicited music to them before, and
Speaker 1: maybe they have a track record with those people. It's
Speaker 1: it's the workload, I think for a manager. And you'll
Speaker 1: probably hear this from a lower manager of friends of
Speaker 1: yours or people you talk to the workload from saying
Speaker 1: when I was a kid working for managers versus what
Speaker 1: managers have to do now two different jobs. Two different jobs.
Speaker 1: You can never I don't think you can never achieve
Speaker 1: if you've got a checklist of everything you have to achieve.
Speaker 1: If you're releasing a record, you can never do. By
Speaker 1: the time the records are the job doesn't end. Okay.
Speaker 1: These streaming services provide a lot of artists data. So
Speaker 1: to what degree do you look at that data and
Speaker 1: does it affect your game? I think that depends on
Speaker 1: the size of the office. I find that really really
Speaker 1: useful with the larger office because you can focus on
Speaker 1: certain areas um and then the areas where nothing's happening.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, we've got to put a bit of
Speaker 1: weight over here for a young artists. And it's someone
Speaker 1: like we're talking about Cecilia, who hasn't put a record out,
Speaker 1: so there's zero data on her. So I think it's
Speaker 1: just going to be interesting and how we act on
Speaker 1: as two different you know another thing. You know, you
Speaker 1: get the data, what do we do with that data?
Speaker 1: You know, we just want to see, Oh, is there
Speaker 1: people you know, as the New York there's graviting towards
Speaker 1: her but nowhere else or is it just the coast,
Speaker 1: or is it maybe in the in the South. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just naturally if everything, so, it's going to be
Speaker 1: really interesting to see what comes back. Then at that point,
Speaker 1: we still know what kind of office we have or
Speaker 1: where people are. You know, is she being played on
Speaker 1: rock and alternative or should be being played on sort
Speaker 1: of you know, more sort of the middle of the
Speaker 1: road type stations or is it she going to get
Speaker 1: in some country stations? And maybe the cover song. We
Speaker 1: have no idea how this is going to pick up.
Speaker 1: So that's where the data is interesting because it sort
Speaker 1: of tells you where you are and where you've got
Speaker 1: to focus. Um, you know, if we get the heat map,
Speaker 1: you know, and terrist, she's not just in the US,
Speaker 1: but around the world, you know, because these things can break.
Speaker 1: Oh this thing is breaking out of France. Well, how
Speaker 1: did that happen? Then you gotta figure out how it happened,
Speaker 1: and then you gotta go there and you've gotta chase
Speaker 1: that one. And if it breaks in one place, you know,
Speaker 1: you can mirror it elsewhere, you know, And that's kind
Speaker 1: of again. I never thought I would get into trying
Speaker 1: to break a brand new artists from zero again until
Speaker 1: I heard this music. But you I'm a music fan,
Speaker 1: heard the music, so this isn't a way to make
Speaker 1: a living, you know. So we're definitely not doing it
Speaker 1: to every quick you know. And I say, it's coming
Speaker 1: back to why are we doing this in the first place?
Speaker 1: Because the music is great. She's legitimate, she's the real deal,
Speaker 1: she's a real artist. She didn't just write a one
Speaker 1: off pop song that we think we can chase and
Speaker 1: make a hit, you know. So it's trying to remind yourselves.
Speaker 1: Are people that work with me, we're all music fans,
Speaker 1: as like, why are we doing this? Let's do with this.
Speaker 1: We're not going to earn a penny for years, if
Speaker 1: we ever earned anything, but it's the right thing to do.
Speaker 1: In these various as of the stool. How important is
Speaker 1: television today? Into what degree do you put attention in
Speaker 1: that area? We keep analyzing that and discussing that internally. Um,
Speaker 1: during the late nights, you know, all of the late nights,
Speaker 1: without even naming any of them, they're all good fun,
Speaker 1: they're great. You really don't get much from them with
Speaker 1: your music unless you're doing something there's some kind of
Speaker 1: gimmick production gimmick you know, or your your you know,
Speaker 1: the artist has created something where it may go viral
Speaker 1: and it lives online after the performance. But the actual
Speaker 1: sort of look at their ratings on all these shows,
Speaker 1: who watches them? Are they? You know? How real are
Speaker 1: those ratings? Are people really watching to the last five
Speaker 1: minutes of the show when an artist is going to
Speaker 1: put a song on. I don't know about that. I
Speaker 1: really don't know. He used to be such an important tool.
Speaker 1: Now I think it's one of those things unless you
Speaker 1: can make it viral, unless you can create something that's
Speaker 1: a little different and again create a talking point where
Speaker 1: we sto down, we have a coffee, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: did you see your selling so on Jimmy fallon last night?
Speaker 1: You know, I see, You've gotta watch it because this happened.
Speaker 1: Then you go online and you'll look it up, and
Speaker 1: you will you'll take a look. That's the only way
Speaker 1: that sort are really resonating, or if there's some kind
Speaker 1: of stunt value to it. UM Saturday Night Live seems
Speaker 1: to be the one that still really really need something.
Speaker 1: UM that shows so many highs and lows over the
Speaker 1: past most been on for five years, has been on there.
Speaker 1: You know, so many highs and lows. At some point
Speaker 1: everyone thought, but this is the show is gonna end.
Speaker 1: It's not going to be relevant anymore. Then Boy comes
Speaker 1: back on the newcast and it's on top again. That
Speaker 1: show is still absolutely resonating. That's the one that everyone
Speaker 1: wants to try and get on, you know, but that
Speaker 1: they are always smart with what they book, unless there's
Speaker 1: someone who drops out last minute because of COVID, you know,
Speaker 1: which has been happening lately. You know, they're not getting
Speaker 1: the artists that they wanted. They had someone book for
Speaker 1: models and then they drop um. So that one still
Speaker 1: really really means something um. But then you go internationally,
Speaker 1: what else means something? Not a lot of the TV
Speaker 1: none of it really means what it used to mean
Speaker 1: unless you can make it something making something special. So
Speaker 1: what I'm finding is like with the bigger artists, you
Speaker 1: need to try and come up with something that's almost
Speaker 1: like an artist special. Can you make something that's just
Speaker 1: different from the norm. Can you make something that's artists
Speaker 1: in conversation with someone you know, like try and get
Speaker 1: a BBC or an NBC or another network to get
Speaker 1: them bored. And so you've given fans something a little
Speaker 1: bit richer than just use one song from a new album.
Speaker 1: Never gonna work. But yet it's still something you do
Speaker 1: because you know, this is that they are of marketing.
Speaker 1: If marketing is a science, you know, we don't know
Speaker 1: how to do it when we throw everything at the wall. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to do the cover of Billboards so that
Speaker 1: the industry knows what we're doing. And we're gonna do,
Speaker 1: you know, try and get the cover of Rolling Stone.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really mean anything, but we're gonna do it anyway,
Speaker 1: you know. And we're gonna do Jimmy Fallon and we're
Speaker 1: gonna try and get set in that live. And we've
Speaker 1: spent all this money in advertising and all the key
Speaker 1: markets and stuff, and you started throwing everything at the
Speaker 1: ball in the wall, and we've got all this social
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on and everyone's doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, And again, how do you make it resonate?
Speaker 1: How do you get in the conversation, because then it
Speaker 1: becomes a little bit like wallpaper and this instead of
Speaker 1: our daily task. How are we shaking this up? You know?
Speaker 1: What is the next trend? You know, especially for a
Speaker 1: lot of the acts that I work with, you know,
Speaker 1: they're older, they're really established, they're really really successful, you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest artists in their fielding, in their genre. You know.
Speaker 1: Yet you can't take up a brand, so you can't
Speaker 1: just drop a record like Beyonce it and you know
Speaker 1: it's gonna go. It doesn't work like that, So you
Speaker 1: have to be more creative, you know. Stuff found that
Speaker 1: more and more my jobs. It's almost like, yes, you manage,
Speaker 1: but it's more about marketing. How do you present these
Speaker 1: artists to market? You know, And that's the toughest thing.
Speaker 1: It's got to be right for them. It's got to
Speaker 1: feel good, feel appropriate, connect with their audience. Um, and
Speaker 1: it gets harder. Let's leave a side top forty radio
Speaker 1: because you don't really have acts in those areas. Those
Speaker 1: are the Beyonces, etcetera. And that's narrower than it's ever
Speaker 1: been basically hip hop and pop. So the other types
Speaker 1: of radio to what degree did they fit into your
Speaker 1: plan and how effective are they in terms of getting
Speaker 1: the message? I study use the same sort of analogy
Speaker 1: very diod from marketing. It's important to have a presence
Speaker 1: serious ex sam is probably the most important I feel,
Speaker 1: you know, unless you're again on the top party radio,
Speaker 1: then I how's your best friend? Um? But for us
Speaker 1: is that I work with you know, serious is legitimate.
Speaker 1: They have a real listenership, you know, and how they've
Speaker 1: grown in the past fifteen years, you know, from a
Speaker 1: few million subscribers to probably all closer to forty million
Speaker 1: subscribers not um, I don't know the exact date on that,
Speaker 1: but it's getting well. They announced thirty two and there's
Speaker 1: six point six point five that are on free accounts,
Speaker 1: so your number is pretty good. Okay, So yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I keep seeing it every sort of year where they're at,
Speaker 1: and you just that they're going up. But it's that's
Speaker 1: a lot of potential listeners more so than anything else. However,
Speaker 1: you know those listeners is like, yeah, I only like
Speaker 1: sixties or seventies radio, you know, or I only like country.
Speaker 1: I only listen to Howard Stern. There's still a lot
Speaker 1: of that. But they're really really good at what they do,
Speaker 1: and you've got to think that whatever genre you're in,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a dedicated listenership, you know, because let's
Speaker 1: face it, you know, like where can we're rock bands?
Speaker 1: You know, alternative radio doesn't mean what it used to mean,
Speaker 1: you know, gone on the days of the label spending
Speaker 1: money hiring independent radio specialists to try and push your
Speaker 1: music on specific formats. Yes, it still happens, but they
Speaker 1: don't think they get the return anymore. You know, if
Speaker 1: they get all there, the payback isn't what it used
Speaker 1: to be. It doesn't move any you know, so that
Speaker 1: is a challenge. Um. But yet, like when I look
Speaker 1: at sort of a C radio or how a C
Speaker 1: you look at the total listenership and it's so small.
Speaker 1: It's important for artists to see that their music is
Speaker 1: being played. So a lot of it is. And I
Speaker 1: get this from big artists. How do I measure my
Speaker 1: success today? I used to look at my success where
Speaker 1: you know, whatever radio chart with a song in the
Speaker 1: top five, my album went in in the top five. Oh,
Speaker 1: my album's gone go no, no, my album's gone platinum.
Speaker 1: That's how they used to measure their success. Oh, and
Speaker 1: doing the two or thirty days and they've all sold that.
Speaker 1: Artists feel successful today. They might still do the shows
Speaker 1: that way, but then they see any we've got number
Speaker 1: one record this week, and you you're very very aware
Speaker 1: of this. Over the past few years, you know, we've
Speaker 1: gone from bundling tickets with some authors, we've got really
Speaker 1: big tours, you know. So you're buying the ticket and
Speaker 1: it comes with the CD, and the CD goes out
Speaker 1: an accounted for for a scam and that doesn't happen anymore.
Speaker 1: So now everything changes to formats. How do we get
Speaker 1: our hardcore fans two collected from formats and boost our
Speaker 1: numbers first week? Um, So measuring off the success, which
Speaker 1: you know, everyone I work with is like, well, what
Speaker 1: does that mean? Yes, I got number one a week
Speaker 1: two I was number thirty, you know, week three I
Speaker 1: was number sixty three, whatever, So how do I measure
Speaker 1: my success? And it's a really hard question to ask.
Speaker 1: But in the advent of streaming the big artist that
Speaker 1: I work with and we work with as a company,
Speaker 1: you see a whole lift across the entire catalog, you know.
Speaker 1: So that makes it even more complicated to measure success
Speaker 1: unless you really get down to the analytics of exactly,
Speaker 1: say what you were doing across the catalog to what
Speaker 1: you did for the catalog over a very small window
Speaker 1: of time, and what does that lift equate to, and
Speaker 1: then trying to break it down financially is even more
Speaker 1: complicated because then it goes down to the nature of
Speaker 1: the artists deal. Um So, trying to measure success for
Speaker 1: the biggest arts in the world has never been harder,
Speaker 1: I don't think. But they will see the revenue eventually
Speaker 1: flow through because of the increased across If you've got
Speaker 1: twenty albums and your catalog and thirty albums your catalog,
Speaker 1: you see movement across the whole thing. Not necessarily a
Speaker 1: new record, but everything goes up. People are curious, Oh,
Speaker 1: I like that record, I'm going to go back to
Speaker 1: that one, not necessarily the new one. Um So I'm learning.
Speaker 1: We're all learning. Just when you think you know your job,
Speaker 1: you don't know your job. It's back to square one again.
Speaker 1: How do we do this, How do we do better?
Speaker 1: How do we service our artists? How do we make
Speaker 1: them feel that it's not just about touring. Yes, touring
Speaker 1: has never been better for certain artists, but that's not
Speaker 1: what feats them. They like their shows, they're happy to
Speaker 1: be paid well, but they still want to see their
Speaker 1: art and their music becomes successful because that's why their artists,
Speaker 1: you know, like working with all for example, he doesn't
Speaker 1: stop h whites it all the time. He's never stopped
Speaker 1: since years. Yeah, So it's he wants to know that
Speaker 1: he's relevant. He's putting up music and there's an audience
Speaker 1: that have music. Okay, so you mentioned the charts. Hey,
Speaker 1: do you feel there's a significant chart in addition to
Speaker 1: the Billboard Nielsen chart, and that chart, as you say,
Speaker 1: number one, can be manipulated with games physical product In addition,
Speaker 1: they meld physical and digital downloads along with streams and
Speaker 1: now YouTube in a certain way. So, hey, to what
Speaker 1: degree do you play the games because everybody else does
Speaker 1: be would you be in favor of the game's going
Speaker 1: away and see what is it like actually living in
Speaker 1: the world? Okay, Um, I feel that I'm partly responsible
Speaker 1: for creating the games. Um why the game's created? Um? Again,
Speaker 1: going back to say what we're saying about pop artist
Speaker 1: pop artists through history. If you're Beyonce, if you're Kendrick Lamar,
Speaker 1: your Drake, you're Adele. Any of those artists drop a
Speaker 1: song today, it's number one next week. They don't do anything,
Speaker 1: no physical products. It's probably just there are people who
Speaker 1: still digitally download the few that are there. It's still relevant,
Speaker 1: but the rest of streaming those artis can just drop
Speaker 1: the song in the system and boom. Yeah, it would
Speaker 1: be a dream. I'd love to work with something like that,
Speaker 1: but I don't um so in order to try and
Speaker 1: get that chart, because again, let's face it, and you
Speaker 1: probably have exact stats on this, I don't. Is it
Speaker 1: something like the top three percent of all big artists
Speaker 1: probably consume nine plus percent of all streaming. I don't
Speaker 1: know the exact staff there. It's I don't know the
Speaker 1: exact one, but it's not too far away from that.
Speaker 1: And what that means is if you're not a pop
Speaker 1: artist that has been consumed at insane rates by people
Speaker 1: say between the ages of twelve and twenty five, and
Speaker 1: and that's just a very random number. Those are people
Speaker 1: with more disposable time, more downtime then say maybe their
Speaker 1: parents who have good jobs and trying to sort of
Speaker 1: run their lives. They don't have as much free time
Speaker 1: as young people. Young people are free time. They can
Speaker 1: consume that their friends, they share songs, they're online, they're
Speaker 1: all chatting with each other, sharing music all the time,
Speaker 1: and they're they're consuming a lot of music. They're not
Speaker 1: doing that for more, shall we say, established artists, people
Speaker 1: who have had more than five albums in their career.
Speaker 1: As soon as they hit that thirty five to forty
Speaker 1: five maybe plays a little different. They seem to be
Speaker 1: breaking them old um. But most other artists aren't streaming
Speaker 1: like they should. I would think most artists that I
Speaker 1: work with, and let's make up a number. Let's say
Speaker 1: for ch our purposes, they've got a hundred thousand albums
Speaker 1: in the U S and week one, that's what the
Speaker 1: sales equivalent would be. I think probably between three and
Speaker 1: five on a good day would be streaming numbers. So
Speaker 1: without having any kind of creative game plan, you're never
Speaker 1: gonna get that hundred thousand target if that is what
Speaker 1: it needed to be to be number one that week,
Speaker 1: or even playing top five, You're never going to get
Speaker 1: there without first having to say, Okay, how are we
Speaker 1: going to break this down? You know, how are we
Speaker 1: going to get to where we want to get to?
Speaker 1: And then you have to find the path to get there,
Speaker 1: and I've started become really really good at that with
Speaker 1: everyone that I work with. You've got to try and
Speaker 1: look after the fans. What do the fans want who,
Speaker 1: at least hardcore base, what do they really really want
Speaker 1: from this office, and then you've got to try and
Speaker 1: feed them, knowing that your streaming numbers right now aren't
Speaker 1: going to get you there alone, you know. So I
Speaker 1: couldn't put a record up by and Paulay or s
Speaker 1: Twain and just any of the albums up. We've got
Speaker 1: a great final, We've got a great CD. You can
Speaker 1: stream it on Apple and Spotify and Amazon, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just it would probably do a tenth of
Speaker 1: what we've needed to do. Let's go to YouTube content.
Speaker 1: To what degree is it necessary? And do you create
Speaker 1: specific content for YouTube like videos? It used to be,
Speaker 1: you know, you made a video for MTV. Now the
Speaker 1: bigger acts make a video especially for YouTube. Maybe it
Speaker 1: might be distributed elsewhere. Other acts do nothing and hope
Speaker 1: for fan content or something that might be from a
Speaker 1: late night shell. To what degree is that part of
Speaker 1: the plan? And what do you do YouTube? I've found
Speaker 1: at least for they are acts, I work with them
Speaker 1: in such an important partner because they're willing to be creative,
Speaker 1: they're willing to do things out the books, and they're
Speaker 1: willing to assist you to fund it. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago, McConney released an album called Egypt Station and
Speaker 1: that was the name of the album. So we're trying
Speaker 1: to think, how do we launch this album, you know,
Speaker 1: and we've done a bunch of great stunts over the
Speaker 1: years with him. He's really open to doing things if
Speaker 1: they're created. And we thought, we we've never done anything
Speaker 1: in a station, So what about Grand Central Station probably
Speaker 1: one of the most iconic training stations on the planet architecturally,
Speaker 1: everyone knows it would be anywhere in the world. And
Speaker 1: you say grind Central, they know it's New York. Why
Speaker 1: don't we try and do the album comes out on Friday.
Speaker 1: Why do we try and do the show just after
Speaker 1: rush our sitting pm on a Friday night in Grand
Speaker 1: Central Station, and let's film it, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful, beautiful room there. As architecturally, it's actually stunning.
Speaker 1: Next time you in New York, if you haven't been there,
Speaker 1: have a walk around. The building is unbelievably beautiful. So
Speaker 1: we found this amazing room. We've got the permissions. New
Speaker 1: York's very friendly. You know, three different police forces. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got the Metro police for the station, You've got
Speaker 1: state police, you've got a city police, got them all
Speaker 1: talking in harmony. The Mayor's office gave his permits. It's
Speaker 1: really strict. Everything about it was really strict, from the
Speaker 1: minute you go in, the minute you get out what
Speaker 1: you have to do. And YouTube came on board and
Speaker 1: filmed this and we we filmed it in such a cinematic,
Speaker 1: beautiful way the really creative director and we broadcast alive.
Speaker 1: So those stunts are so few and far between, they
Speaker 1: don't work for every artist, but it was such a
Speaker 1: monumental event. That event was captured, it's still online. And
Speaker 1: we we partnered. We did a fun partnership, say would
Speaker 1: lift and on their maps because anyone wanted to the station,
Speaker 1: they gave him a lift there for free, you know.
Speaker 1: And they re branded the station on the maps and
Speaker 1: Egypt Station for a night into Grand Central Away. So
Speaker 1: we had a bunch of fun, gimmicky things. But but
Speaker 1: the YouTube partnership was so vital there because we couldn't
Speaker 1: have afforded to do it without them. You know, I
Speaker 1: think they paid, you know, just over half of what
Speaker 1: it costs and the rest we use from marketing budgets
Speaker 1: from the label. But it was such a stunning event
Speaker 1: and created a real moment and what we gained from
Speaker 1: that media wise, especially in New York, the biggest selling market,
Speaker 1: you know, or literally the state of New York is
Speaker 1: where he sells more product than anywhere else, and you
Speaker 1: get all the front page coverage from that, you know,
Speaker 1: McCartney shuts down Rush Hour and things like this, and
Speaker 1: but it was all because of YouTube. We could have
Speaker 1: done it without. Then I go into Andrea but Chelly
Speaker 1: and this is in April. It was Easter Day and
Speaker 1: we went to This is actually one of my staff, Francesco.
Speaker 1: We were in a team in Italy. He came up
Speaker 1: with this idea and we all thought, yeah, that's kind
Speaker 1: of a cool idea. It didn't set our worlds up
Speaker 1: far and thinking like, yeah, cool, we should go with
Speaker 1: it if it's you know, and his idea was on
Speaker 1: Easter Day because everything was a lockdown. No one was
Speaker 1: allowed other than the groceres or walking your dog or something.
Speaker 1: We did this event at the Duomo Cathedral in the Lama.
Speaker 1: We sold the idea to YouTube as and would you
Speaker 1: like to help fund this and we're broadcast it live
Speaker 1: um and it was just really under it in the cathedral.
Speaker 1: You know, he sang a couple of songs and we
Speaker 1: had to rehearse and walking out the cathedral because he's blind.
Speaker 1: He walked all the way outside of the cathedral and
Speaker 1: sang a song in the square at that's normally full
Speaker 1: of tourists and full of people. There was a ghost
Speaker 1: town and he sang a song with the cathedral as
Speaker 1: the background. The weather was beautiful. We had a crew
Speaker 1: of six people and a couple of staff, and there
Speaker 1: his wife. There's no one there. It was all very
Speaker 1: tied because of COVID pre the call, and that changed
Speaker 1: the game completely because everywhere, I think we had something
Speaker 1: crazy like three and a half to four million people
Speaker 1: chewed in the live around the world. It became such
Speaker 1: an event. We were thirty million the next day because
Speaker 1: people would go back because the world them out. You've
Speaker 1: got to see this, you know. And and that for
Speaker 1: him was something that we thought would just be a
Speaker 1: cool little thing for him to do, and he just
Speaker 1: wanted to do it earthly and then turn it into
Speaker 1: this global event. And again I think it was a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty thou dollars in costs for the film
Speaker 1: crew and the satellite up link, a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but not a lot of money in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things, and that was such a game changer. And again,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm probably the best salesman right now,
Speaker 1: but they thought, this is a great idea. We want
Speaker 1: to support the artist. Let's do this. So going back
Speaker 1: to your point though, artists doing videos for your YouTube,
Speaker 1: I think to try and get an engagement, you know,
Speaker 1: like YouTube are always willing to if you go to
Speaker 1: them with an idea. Okay, we're gonna have this artist
Speaker 1: of this group of this band sit down with this
Speaker 1: actor and this other artists friends of theirs, and they're
Speaker 1: going to talk about the new music and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden they're going to introduce a new video,
Speaker 1: almost like a premier. YouTube are always game for any
Speaker 1: cool ideas. I did one with Paul and Chris Rock.
Speaker 1: They just chatted about music and it was over zoom
Speaker 1: because it couldn't be in the same place YouTube. And yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll do this, but not only will we do this,
Speaker 1: we'll actually support this and we'll take our off side
Speaker 1: billboards because like most companies, they book billboards around the world,
Speaker 1: but they pretty much take on a twelve monthly basis,
Speaker 1: and we will drive more traffic to this, so they
Speaker 1: really get behind the artist. There's such an important partner,
Speaker 1: but they're one of many really important partners and it's
Speaker 1: just another piece of the puzzle. You've got to get
Speaker 1: them on board, and you've got to be really, really creative.
Speaker 1: What works for the fans, what works for the artists,
Speaker 1: and also what works for the company. Can you get
Speaker 1: all three right at the same time. Um, the biggest
Speaker 1: issue with YouTube will always come back to, well, how
Speaker 1: do they pay? You know. It's like like all of
Speaker 1: these arguments you know, with Spotify or how are they paying?
Speaker 1: You know? Is how they paying fair rates to the artists.
Speaker 1: There's always that fine line between water is promo. If
Speaker 1: you look at YouTube like we U see look at MTV,
Speaker 1: We're not getting paid for that. They're playing our video
Speaker 1: ten times a day. So it's that fine line between
Speaker 1: ensuring the artist gets paid when music is being played
Speaker 1: and also we need to promotional outlet because if we
Speaker 1: have something that we feel is great that our fans love,
Speaker 1: hopefully we can create that project. If YouTube is partnering
Speaker 1: with you, do they still pay from view one or
Speaker 1: do they say we invested all this money you want
Speaker 1: to take it off top no, they still pay from Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go to the other end of the spectrum, Cecilia.
Speaker 1: You know, without you can talk about her specifically but
Speaker 1: in general and act like that with much less visibility.
Speaker 1: Will you create specific content to post on YouTube very
Speaker 1: close to launch or even before I think so. I
Speaker 1: think you have to try and get the autics personality across.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's something conversation piece, maybe it's sort of playing acoustically.
Speaker 1: We will create specific content that we will put on YouTube.
Speaker 1: Her sitting in our bedroom. You know, there's nothing better.
Speaker 1: At the amount of time she's a zoom and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to play you this? What do you think
Speaker 1: call it? And it's so fun when when that happens,
Speaker 1: because no one else does that. Let's face it, you know,
Speaker 1: the young artists who are not tainted with this industry,
Speaker 1: not jaded in any way, Hey can you do the zoom?
Speaker 1: And she'll just sit in her bedroom with a little
Speaker 1: leftop there and taught herself how to record, and she
Speaker 1: will just play a song and it's it's so effortless
Speaker 1: and amazing. It's almost like we just put a little
Speaker 1: camera crew in your bedroom with this little twin bed
Speaker 1: and your little leftop on your desk and stuff and
Speaker 1: just record you doing this. So absolutely because contents King,
Speaker 1: how do you you know when someone discovers you discover anything,
Speaker 1: you want to know more, Oh has that person done
Speaker 1: anything else? And you go backwards what else have they done?
Speaker 1: Kind of learn more. It's gonna be the same for anyone,
Speaker 1: any new fan, anyone who's remotely interested. They want to
Speaker 1: go digging, and if there's nothing there, you're not feeding them.
Speaker 1: So we're going to try and feed them until we
Speaker 1: put an album out. Then it comes to question, who
Speaker 1: you know, if she puts an album mobile, I'll be
Speaker 1: putting out physically. You know? Is there a marketing even
Speaker 1: for vinyl as big as viol is Right now, we
Speaker 1: kind of don't know what's what shape this is gonna
Speaker 1: take until we start. It's kind of exciting, really, this
Speaker 1: them is our hope or only hope for this album.
Speaker 1: Even if we don't sell a lot of records, I
Speaker 1: guarantee we're going to be in the year top ten lists.
Speaker 1: That's where we're going to get with the record. Let's
Speaker 1: go to TikTok. What do we know? The traditional music
Speaker 1: infrastructure was blindsided by this. Then we had the incredible
Speaker 1: success with the Cranberry Juice and Fleetwood Mac. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not run like the other social platforms. You know,
Speaker 1: the company invests and it allows you to not have
Speaker 1: talking about as someone who's creating videos, not myself, but
Speaker 1: a creator they might be able to get into in traction,
Speaker 1: whereas on the other systems, if you haven't already made it,
Speaker 1: you're really pushing the rock uphill. To what degree do
Speaker 1: you interface with TikTok? Does it work or is it
Speaker 1: really just about getting lucky that someone picks up yourself
Speaker 1: and peels like it's really just about getting lucky? The
Speaker 1: genuinely does. Like every other outlet, you have to address it.
Speaker 1: You can. It's not an afterthought every call that we do.
Speaker 1: What's our plan for YouTube? What's our plan for Spotify?
Speaker 1: What's our plan for Apple? What's our plan for TikTok's
Speaker 1: our plan for Amazon? Every single partner you have to address.
Speaker 1: You have to give them time. You have to try
Speaker 1: and get creative. What content can we put up there
Speaker 1: that's not only going to connect with the artists fans?
Speaker 1: How do we get new fans? How do you introduce
Speaker 1: this new music to people who may I've never heard
Speaker 1: of the artists a new artist, even as an older artist,
Speaker 1: you know, like a new music out How do we
Speaker 1: get this out there? Um? And by far no means
Speaker 1: an expert on Spotify, on TikTok. Luckily I have younger staffs.
Speaker 1: They're way more you know, well worse than I am. Um.
Speaker 1: But it still feels like it's pot luck. It's about
Speaker 1: music connecting with something a creator has done, you know,
Speaker 1: or the artists does something that's really appropriate for that platform.
Speaker 1: I haven't had anything big breakout of it. Had some
Speaker 1: fun moments with it, but they never really turned into
Speaker 1: anything tangible. But I've seen but I think it's something
Speaker 1: that you need a presence. The view counts that you
Speaker 1: get on some of these uh little pieces of content
Speaker 1: that you post are insanely large, but I don't see
Speaker 1: that translate off the platform. Okay, let's go to the road.
Speaker 1: Let's talk with someone like Paul McCartney is essentially going
Speaker 1: to sell out everywhere he plays. How do you decide
Speaker 1: on frequency, location, building, ticket prices. Paul was always really, really,
Speaker 1: really adamant, even with the new world of secondary ticket
Speaker 1: things stub hubs and all those after market platforms where
Speaker 1: people would sell the tickets for two or three, four
Speaker 1: or five, ten times the cover price. Paul never wanted
Speaker 1: to charge more than three dollars, even though he could
Speaker 1: have this role and that is two thousand dollars whatever.
Speaker 1: He always wanted to keep it tight, still does, still
Speaker 1: having these conversations. Always make sure he's aware of how
Speaker 1: things work, to make sure you knows what every other
Speaker 1: office is doing. And at that point it's his choice. Um,
Speaker 1: that's generally ticketing. So his grocers are always going to
Speaker 1: be lower than what they could be because he doesn't
Speaker 1: want to raise his prices. That's just the way is,
Speaker 1: even though he knows that three ticket, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: buy for two and a half thousand dollars. Okay, how
Speaker 1: do you decide how often on the market? Now? How
Speaker 1: do you just decide forre you get to the yeah,
Speaker 1: in terms of uh, if leaving COVID out of the picture,
Speaker 1: let's really talk to paradigm before that. How much does
Speaker 1: he want to work and how do you decide the
Speaker 1: market and within a certain country where to play and
Speaker 1: what size buildings. Let me give you an example saying
Speaker 1: in the US, probably easiest one to do um Pose
Speaker 1: agent and co promoters a gentleman named Aarry Marshall who
Speaker 1: has worked with Paul for decades. One of the best
Speaker 1: I've ever worked with, learned so much from He's such
Speaker 1: a mentor, such a you know, fountain of knowledge. And
Speaker 1: if you ever go to Barry's office, which is in London,
Speaker 1: he's a map of the world, big map of the
Speaker 1: world on a really big wall and there's little color
Speaker 1: coordinated pins on this map and each pin will signal
Speaker 1: signify a year and the tour, so you can see, okay,
Speaker 1: how many times has he been here, how intends to
Speaker 1: be there? And that's what it ends up doing, is
Speaker 1: where has he never been? So you find out all
Speaker 1: these markets where he has never been, and he always
Speaker 1: wants to go to these places. Even though with Paul,
Speaker 1: if he doesn't run a dates, let's say shows in
Speaker 1: the US, he could just do major markets, but he
Speaker 1: could do major markets every two or three years if
Speaker 1: he wanted to, or every year even but he doesn't.
Speaker 1: He wants to go places where he has been just
Speaker 1: adding to the fact that he will have played most
Speaker 1: places and he was always into trying to do if
Speaker 1: you went to a major market let's say New York,
Speaker 1: I'm going to play in the Garden a few nights,
Speaker 1: then maybe go across across the river to the Barkley
Speaker 1: Center for a couple of nights. Maybe go over to
Speaker 1: New Jersey for a couple of nights. I'm covering the
Speaker 1: Try State area. Then maybe next time I'm go and
Speaker 1: play Met Life. You know, so never wants to just
Speaker 1: repeat MetLife, Met Life, MetLife Yankee Stadium, Met Life Yankee
Speaker 1: Stadium sometimes wants to keep it smaller and more intimate,
Speaker 1: mix it up for fans so they're not just getting
Speaker 1: the same thing every time. Same In Los Angeles, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe okay, maybe we're gonna play the Forum, or we're
Speaker 1: gonna play Staples Center or Hollywood Bowl, and maybe we're
Speaker 1: gonna do like Dodger Stadium. You know. So it's always
Speaker 1: tries to mix it up. Um and then with the
Speaker 1: rest of the world, it's like, okay, you know, he
Speaker 1: hadn't really done South America. The Beetles never did South America.
Speaker 1: So then we said, okay, let's start with Mexico, and
Speaker 1: we did a whole bunch of shows in Mexico, played
Speaker 1: the Aztecs Stadium in Mexico City who played Zokolo Square
Speaker 1: for a free show for two children, fifty people, you know.
Speaker 1: And there's another place called Fotosaul, which is like the
Speaker 1: baseball stadium, you know. So okay, we're doing all these venues,
Speaker 1: and we've done the arenas, so you covered that one. Wherever.
Speaker 1: Never been never in a Paraguay, never been to Uruguay,
Speaker 1: you know, and never be in the Chile never you know,
Speaker 1: never been to Peru. When we started going around all
Speaker 1: of these places, and I remember going with him to
Speaker 1: a sun shone in Paraguay. Flying in, I can't even
Speaker 1: see a city. I always see his jungle and like,
Speaker 1: who is going to come and see him play in
Speaker 1: this city? And you get there and you're really in
Speaker 1: the you feel I really feel like I'm in remote
Speaker 1: part of the planet, never mind in this country itself.
Speaker 1: Then we go to this rookiey old football stadium and
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand people show up, and it's like, where
Speaker 1: did these people come from? How did they know him?
Speaker 1: How can they afford the ticket? Doesn't look like a
Speaker 1: wealthy country. Um, And we sell out and it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It never ever ever ceases to amaze me how things
Speaker 1: are that can happen. It's magical. And one thing that
Speaker 1: Paul when we're speaking last week, he he he always
Speaker 1: talks about this. He's going, you know, I'm hanging out
Speaker 1: with friends or bump into someone they like, hey, what
Speaker 1: are you up to? You know you're still playing these days.
Speaker 1: He's going, people have no idea what goes on another
Speaker 1: parts of the world, you know, and we've got to
Speaker 1: remind them. We gotta do something with that. Because when
Speaker 1: he's in Mexico, he's in Argentina, all those places, it's
Speaker 1: still beatle Mania. Thousands of fans outside of that town
Speaker 1: all night, singing Beatles songs with their flags and there
Speaker 1: whatever they've painted on them. And when he tries to
Speaker 1: get out of the hotel, more often than not, same
Speaker 1: in Japan, he's got to go out from underneath the
Speaker 1: service entrance. You can go out the front door. It's
Speaker 1: kind of next level craziness. Yeah, And the rest of
Speaker 1: the world is all very civilized, it's all very polite,
Speaker 1: and he's like, it's kind of he says, that still
Speaker 1: blows my mind that no one has any idea. You know,
Speaker 1: we just played three nights that were played stadium. We
Speaker 1: played two d and ten thousand people. It's beat on
Speaker 1: many of their Nobody knos you know, so we have
Speaker 1: we're talking about it. How do we pull something together,
Speaker 1: you know in the future. You know, it's like, but
Speaker 1: there's a little mini dark or something. Because we film everything.
Speaker 1: You film all the shows, We record all the shows
Speaker 1: with a bureau team were still photographers. We document all
Speaker 1: of this. Um So at some point hopefully we can
Speaker 1: do something and people are, oh, that was happening, that's
Speaker 1: still happens. Um So it's pretty funny. Just that's one
Speaker 1: artist perspective and can look at Andrea Butchelli. No one
Speaker 1: talks twice about Andrea but Chelly that often. He's one
Speaker 1: of the highest box office grossing stuffles on the planet.
Speaker 1: Certainly in the US. Nobody knows. You know. You can
Speaker 1: go down in Brazil and he's playing multiple nights and
Speaker 1: football stadiums, nobody knows, you know. So this is sort
Speaker 1: of off. His careers, you know, are so different, so
Speaker 1: diverse across the world. And how you get that to
Speaker 1: connect so that everyone is aware all over the world
Speaker 1: is something I haven't managed to crack yet. Let's stay
Speaker 1: with the Curdy for a minute. At this late date,
Speaker 1: what does he want? Also, he has a reputation for
Speaker 1: being a student of the game. There's certain artists that do,
Speaker 1: like Elton John whatever, and the other artists are oblivious.
Speaker 1: Just point me in the right direction and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: So to what degree is he involved in strategizing, knowing
Speaker 1: the numbers, etcetera. And what is he actually looking for
Speaker 1: at this late date. Papaul is a master of his craft,
Speaker 1: There's no doubt about it. No one has a career
Speaker 1: this long, this successful without really being on top of
Speaker 1: it and driving it. You can help artist careers to
Speaker 1: a point, but if they're not the driver, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: last as long. Um. I think I've learned more about
Speaker 1: my job through working with him than I have done
Speaker 1: through working with anyone else. It made me better at
Speaker 1: my job, made me better with other artists because no
Speaker 1: one's had a career like this who's still active. Um,
Speaker 1: he's super aware every detail, every number he wants to know.
Speaker 1: He's super tuned in, doesn't gloss over anything, needs reporting,
Speaker 1: needs constant communication. Is a really big team, um, great,
Speaker 1: great team that we've refined over years. This is my
Speaker 1: sixteenth year poll. It took probably five or six years
Speaker 1: to find the right team, and we have a great team.
Speaker 1: I wish we could have a team like this, but
Speaker 1: every artist I worked with, it would I get better. Um.
Speaker 1: He's so tuned in and so involved in the creative,
Speaker 1: you know, artwork, paper stock, everything we do. Were we
Speaker 1: do working on the catalog piece and he'd approved the
Speaker 1: cardboard stock and then that was out of stock. Covid
Speaker 1: couldn't get a ship, got another one. He's like, just
Speaker 1: not as good. Let's find something else. So every detail
Speaker 1: he's on, no one, no other artists on the planet
Speaker 1: has this attention to detail. I want to see printing
Speaker 1: samples once, to see everything before he signs off. We
Speaker 1: have a full time team who do this sort of
Speaker 1: thing for him to make sure that it's perfect, you know.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to touring every show, when's the
Speaker 1: last time was there? Oh, haven't been here? He's really
Speaker 1: really involved. The only time in my whole time with
Speaker 1: Paul he let me run with something was when he
Speaker 1: did McCartney three, because he delivered it with eight weeks
Speaker 1: ago before the record came out. That was kind of
Speaker 1: and it was writing Covid. It was run about the
Speaker 1: holiday period of twenty and you know he delivers. The
Speaker 1: masters were often running the hoops we had to jump through.
Speaker 1: For vinyl, you know, I went to Thirpman knocked on
Speaker 1: the door literally to see if they could help his
Speaker 1: manufactured vinyl, and they did because without them we went
Speaker 1: upand behind all So it's it felt like a punk
Speaker 1: rock campaign for someone like Paul McCartney. Made this record
Speaker 1: at home, gave us the record eight weeks before Street Day,
Speaker 1: but no expectations, wasn't really doing any promo, and then
Speaker 1: he says, like he usually does, so send me the
Speaker 1: marketing plan, let me look over with what you plan
Speaker 1: to do. It's like, Paul, trust me on this, just
Speaker 1: go with it. We're gonna make it up as we
Speaker 1: go along. We're not going to put any singles. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna try and drive some excitement if we can
Speaker 1: till the street day so people really want to hear
Speaker 1: the music, and we'll do a series of little movie
Speaker 1: trailers just with you know, little themes, maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit of music in there, just to sort of our
Speaker 1: energy behind this campaign from the moment we announced the
Speaker 1: moment that comes out. He's like, you feel okay with
Speaker 1: this and went feel good with it, just go with it,
Speaker 1: and he went, all right, I trust you go with it.
Speaker 1: First time. I took that long for him to not
Speaker 1: be hands off, but just sort of take one hand off,
Speaker 1: you know. And what I came up with on that
Speaker 1: campaign was let's do the remix album. Originally I thought,
Speaker 1: let's try and get out four weeks after the main album.
Speaker 1: Just drop it McCartney. Three Imagined was was our concept.
Speaker 1: And we just have a different artists, young artists, more
Speaker 1: established artists, just a real, very group of genres. Do
Speaker 1: each song that's on the record just for the fun offense,
Speaker 1: purely for the fun of it, no expectations, just trying
Speaker 1: to sort of all I said. All I was trying
Speaker 1: to do was keeping the conversation longer, you know, because
Speaker 1: there's no hit songs on this record. How do we
Speaker 1: keep people talking about it? But then this album became
Speaker 1: pretty good. Paul never, you know, wasn't really involved in it.
Speaker 1: He signed off and all the artists, this is who
Speaker 1: we're going to approach, great, love them, this is great.
Speaker 1: That was really his involvement, and we just went on.
Speaker 1: We made it. He loved every mix that came in
Speaker 1: and spoke to every artist. He wrote to them all
Speaker 1: was so grateful. Really was a fun project, but it
Speaker 1: took longer simply because of the final backboat. We could
Speaker 1: out five months after I think. Um. So that's the
Speaker 1: one time he kind of took his food off the
Speaker 1: guests a little bit and let his team, who are
Speaker 1: really established we all ran with it. Um. But otherwise
Speaker 1: he's all over everything, every detail, like you wouldn't believe. Okay,
Speaker 1: tell me two things you learned from him. You say
Speaker 1: you learned so much. I think when I first started
Speaker 1: working with Paul, it was one of those things where, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was maybe a little more cocky and confident. I
Speaker 1: thought it was good at what I did with the
Speaker 1: artist that worked with, you know, and I was I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm happy, I'm I know what I'm doing. I'm pretty
Speaker 1: good at this. You know. I was my late dirties
Speaker 1: and I'm like, okay, I got this. And then he
Speaker 1: would call me at all Ours. You know that a
Speaker 1: PM on a Friday night, you know you've had a
Speaker 1: long week. You just get home, put your feet up,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna maybe have some dinner. I'm tired. It's been
Speaker 1: a long week. A lot of ours and he called
Speaker 1: and he's maybe in the car, maybe driving from the
Speaker 1: country up to town, up to London or something. Hey,
Speaker 1: how's it going. I'm like, yeah, great, great, he's gonna
Speaker 1: remember that thing we were talking about last week. You
Speaker 1: said you get back to me. Didn't hear from you?
Speaker 1: Where are we with that? And I'm like, let me
Speaker 1: get my notebook, but don't worry about it. Can call
Speaker 1: me Monday. Um. And you also said you were gonna
Speaker 1: call me on this thing and that thing. I said, uh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't done that yet, you know. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: and I got the game. I'm like, that's how people
Speaker 1: don't survive. And he's always says you can call me anytime,
Speaker 1: seven days a week, night and day. I'm always here,
Speaker 1: and it's true. And he is that person you can
Speaker 1: calm nine am on a Saturday, tempt you on a
Speaker 1: Sunday something's going on, takes your call never, never doesn't
Speaker 1: take your call, or he'll text back say I'll call
Speaker 1: you back after this thing or whatever. I started playing
Speaker 1: the game back, I'd call him on a Saturday morning
Speaker 1: at nine am and say, hey, Paul, remember we spoke
Speaker 1: with this thing and you you're gonna sort of approve
Speaker 1: or not approve that, you know, so we need to
Speaker 1: move with it. Ye forgot about that. I'll get onto that.
Speaker 1: And and it was like playing ping pong, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of being aced all the time, you know, you
Speaker 1: started to play back and forth, back and forth. Um
Speaker 1: And I got the point where I'd have to write
Speaker 1: little basic notes because he could call yourn or somewhere
Speaker 1: you're in a restaurant, you know, and he wants to
Speaker 1: know the answers. I have all the answers. And then
Speaker 1: I just got the point where I felt like I
Speaker 1: was in top hall. But it took him in in,
Speaker 1: you know, at the point where you feel like your
Speaker 1: head bobbing underwater. You're like, then deliver, then deliver, and
Speaker 1: that just makes you better at your game, makes you
Speaker 1: more efficient. Um And through going through so many different
Speaker 1: experiences with him, and they are of PR. How he
Speaker 1: talked about PR having gone through from the Beatles through
Speaker 1: the present day creative PR games that you play things,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Wow, I learned they are are from him
Speaker 1: how to do it better and that translate to other
Speaker 1: artists what you need to do to make it connect
Speaker 1: and be better, you know, And because he is the
Speaker 1: master of it. He's been in the public eye for
Speaker 1: sixty years, you know, and at that point I would
Speaker 1: say he I would say he's an expert. At that point,
Speaker 1: it's more than ten, that's for sure. You said you
Speaker 1: also learned a lot from Barry Marshal the agent. Tell
Speaker 1: me a couple of things you learned there with Barry.
Speaker 1: Barry is the ultimate gentleman one. He knows his craft
Speaker 1: better than anyone else on the planet. He promotes shows
Speaker 1: all over the world. He's not just a British promoter
Speaker 1: or a British agent. And his attention to detail. If
Speaker 1: Paul has never been in the building, or he hasn't
Speaker 1: been in the building, he will fly there with our
Speaker 1: production manager and our tour accountant and they go through
Speaker 1: the building. They say, can we do the show? If
Speaker 1: we do the show, do we have enough of facility here?
Speaker 1: What is everything? They check everything. He flies around the
Speaker 1: world to check everywhere before he confirmed the show Number one,
Speaker 1: number two. We've done some really weird shows with Paul,
Speaker 1: really weird sort of you know, be a promo or
Speaker 1: fun of whatever the reason. Small clubs, you know, tiny
Speaker 1: little clubs or AMVA Records we've done all these weird shows.
Speaker 1: That is the one who goes in, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: going to be Poles dressing room, this is going to
Speaker 1: go here. They make it amazing, unbelievably, So he doesn't
Speaker 1: need to be doing that. There's other people on the
Speaker 1: team that can do that, but he's the one who
Speaker 1: walks through to make sure everything is perfect. When it's
Speaker 1: looking at ticketing and how your ticket shows, and if
Speaker 1: you're shore, you go into in his office, he has
Speaker 1: that full map. You know, say we've got some zone
Speaker 1: way up in the gods that hasn't been selling, he
Speaker 1: makes sure it's going to be sold. He also does
Speaker 1: things like every single show, without fail, always keep a
Speaker 1: few seats quite a few seats, like maybe a row
Speaker 1: right at the front that doesn't sell. He would go
Speaker 1: and pick people that he thinks are really great fans,
Speaker 1: reassigned them at front rows every show, so there's an
Speaker 1: energy there. Because one thing that every artist hates is
Speaker 1: the rich guy up front Cuson is iPhone type and
Speaker 1: emails because they also sees that guy in the front row,
Speaker 1: you know, so he they want to see real legitimate
Speaker 1: fans and when you bring people down from the gods
Speaker 1: who weren't expecting it. And then the front two or
Speaker 1: three rows changes the energy for the artist and baries
Speaker 1: the next Bert at that little detailed little things and
Speaker 1: it's like, wow, Okay, that's amazing, you know, because not
Speaker 1: a g A floor, it's it's you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: reserve seating. You know, where his reserve When it's g
Speaker 1: A and we have done a few g A quite
Speaker 1: a lot of stadiums in South America. You get the
Speaker 1: energy up front, but if it's reserve seats, he brings
Speaker 1: people down because all of those little things. You know,
Speaker 1: he's masterful of his job. Okay, what about Shania Twain
Speaker 1: who played Vegas, etcetera. What are you what about her?
Speaker 1: She is sort of the ultimate pro. Took time off
Speaker 1: when her son was born, stepped back from the industry
Speaker 1: as he got older, her son. You know, she's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm ready again, I want to do this. Um. She
Speaker 1: loves Vegas mainly because she's a big horse rider. She's
Speaker 1: a life just outside of Vegas. Where should go riding?
Speaker 1: You know, it's just part of her global trek when
Speaker 1: she moves around the world. Um. So it's very much
Speaker 1: a lifestyle thing. She liked Vegas. She is her second
Speaker 1: residency in Vegas, and we'll run a residency all year
Speaker 1: this year and then look to go and do world
Speaker 1: through next year. That's the hope. UM. Hopefully there'll be
Speaker 1: a new album, you know, coming later this Year's fun
Speaker 1: of working with office like that is introducing them to
Speaker 1: new collaborators, you know, building new teams around them, giving
Speaker 1: them a new revival energy for what they do. Um.
Speaker 1: And not only that, she's very real. She's a great person,
Speaker 1: great person, hang out with boundless energy, a lot of
Speaker 1: fun to work with. And she's a worker. And you
Speaker 1: find this a lot of the office who have had
Speaker 1: the biggest successes, they work harder than the office who
Speaker 1: have had a marginal amount of their success. I'm not
Speaker 1: afraid to work. They know the game. What's your viewpoint?
Speaker 1: I'm Vegas. You know it used to be the old
Speaker 1: has beens now young people even people only you know,
Speaker 1: you know, ten years in or less, like Katy Perry
Speaker 1: go there. Do you think that's a good thing? To
Speaker 1: what degree? When you go in you have to worry
Speaker 1: about production? And of course for those on the inside
Speaker 1: game in Vegas, the ticket game is totally different. You know,
Speaker 1: if something doesn't instantly sell out, which is rare to
Speaker 1: begin with, you have to have whole network of you know,
Speaker 1: concier different price points, etcetera. Vegas is veggas cells. To
Speaker 1: be realistic, you've got to be looking at close to
Speaker 1: a hundred million tickets a year pretty COVID two million
Speaker 1: a week. That's Vegas. That's a real business for artists
Speaker 1: and promotors alike, and for the buildings. Then every single
Speaker 1: theater in Vegas, all of the the in house theater
Speaker 1: is not, including MGM Arena and Timobile Arena. Their stages
Speaker 1: are as big or bigger than most arenas, so you
Speaker 1: can put any size of production in there. I think
Speaker 1: Usher had like fifteen to seventeen trucks worth of the
Speaker 1: production in there. Huge amounts of production going there. It's unlimited,
Speaker 1: so you can do the stage whatever you would do
Speaker 1: in the biggest arenas in the world, you can do
Speaker 1: in any pretty much any theater in Vegas. So the
Speaker 1: facilities are really great and really production friendly. But then
Speaker 1: you've got to boil down the business. If the theater
Speaker 1: is between four and six thousand capacity, which mostly they are,
Speaker 1: that's still less than half the size of your Aragorina.
Speaker 1: So you're not going to sell as many tickets and
Speaker 1: you're not going to make as much money as say
Speaker 1: one Night am GM versus one night A planed a Hollywood.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna make the same money. No about how
Speaker 1: the tickets of scale, it's not going to be the same.
Speaker 1: So again I think artists like it because it could
Speaker 1: be a lifestyle situation, such as the Adele position. She's
Speaker 1: she's like a young young child. I think quin Stefani
Speaker 1: young child. You're Britney Spears with a couple of kids.
Speaker 1: They like to go work maybe in the weekends to
Speaker 1: fly home. They could fly back to l A then
Speaker 1: fly back. It's a fortwo minute fly so it's really
Speaker 1: friendly for them to be able to work, still be
Speaker 1: a mother and have a different kind of life without
Speaker 1: being on a bus and track and run the world
Speaker 1: for six months. So some people choose it for lifestyles,
Speaker 1: but then you boss is like being the Bruno Mars.
Speaker 1: You have Lady Gaga all these other shows. Katie Perry
Speaker 1: who also probably doing it for lifestyle because she's a
Speaker 1: young mom. You know, she can fly back and forth
Speaker 1: from her home and ever but a lot of artists
Speaker 1: on in that position and they may just go in
Speaker 1: and do I'm going to go in here for you know,
Speaker 1: I'll do twenty shows in a year, spread out over
Speaker 1: a few months. I think artists like it because Vegas.
Speaker 1: I think on average, I was quoted as stats about
Speaker 1: people at every show are not from Vegas. All people
Speaker 1: who have flown in, They've flown in for a weekend.
Speaker 1: They're gonna catch the Beatles Love Show or another set,
Speaker 1: this Live show or a David Copperfield show. Then I'm
Speaker 1: going to catch tonight twenty show or Bruna mar show
Speaker 1: or whoever happens to be playing. So that very much
Speaker 1: feels like Vegas. It feels like it's super active between
Speaker 1: Thursday and Sunday, then really quiet maybe between the Monday
Speaker 1: to Wednesday. Um. Do I like Vegas? Not really? Um,
Speaker 1: but I get it. I understand that. Is it sustainable
Speaker 1: that's another question because Vegas itself isn't a huge city.
Speaker 1: You can see it grow by the year, but in
Speaker 1: comparison to the major cities in the world, it's not
Speaker 1: that big. So is it sustainable to do a hundred
Speaker 1: million tickets a year? I don't know. Well, that hundred million.
Speaker 1: Can't get it hundering twenty million. Maybe, you know, let's
Speaker 1: talk of the new Sphere Arena opening there as well,
Speaker 1: just the third arena possible in the city. You know,
Speaker 1: they're they got the new Allegiance Stadium there where stadium
Speaker 1: shows are going. I'm not sure who's played there other
Speaker 1: than maybe golf, Brooks and guns and roles is so far,
Speaker 1: but there's another stadium there, you know, So that that
Speaker 1: city is growing in the growing in sports and trying
Speaker 1: to bring more sports teams there. And they've got the
Speaker 1: ice hockey team, you know, think they're trying to bring
Speaker 1: a basketball team there, you know. So, um, it's ambitious
Speaker 1: as a city. Um. No. Answering the last part of
Speaker 1: your question, I think I've got most of it, and
Speaker 1: now I think you gotta let me go one step
Speaker 1: deeper here, you know, starting god almost twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: even longer, touring for the absolute top tier change where
Speaker 1: they would base in a city maybe Chicago, and they
Speaker 1: take the jet every night to the different locations, and
Speaker 1: then we have Vegas. Do you think Vegas is sue
Speaker 1: generous just one thing or will the future be the
Speaker 1: acts of the fans coming to the acts as opposed
Speaker 1: to the acts going to the fans. Acts is they
Speaker 1: were going to go for the fans. That will never change.
Speaker 1: That will never change. It has ever changed through my lifetime,
Speaker 1: your lifetime, and it's not going to change. I think
Speaker 1: the residency concept can grow one office being based in
Speaker 1: one city, even if it's not Vegas. I think that
Speaker 1: can happen and people will travel depending on the office.
Speaker 1: But I don't think it's a model for every office. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to the recordings. You know, Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: is a thing unto himself, not that he's in this equation,
Speaker 1: but if you go back to the paradigm was established
Speaker 1: in the seventies and refined in the eighties, you had
Speaker 1: an album come every three to four years, you win single,
Speaker 1: the single, up to five singles, whereas today you can
Speaker 1: put on an album and it's literally over in a weekend. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what's your view on release schedules? What's your view
Speaker 1: on putting out albums supposed to singles? What's your view
Speaker 1: in terms of what dropped once every three years, once
Speaker 1: every year, as opposed to every month. How do you
Speaker 1: feel about all that? I mean, you still gotta ball
Speaker 1: in down to basics. These singers, bands, artists. There are
Speaker 1: artists that that's their craft. They write songs, most of them.
Speaker 1: The load of young ones, there's four or five songwriters
Speaker 1: in each song. It's all studio based. It's great. Is
Speaker 1: that's a different lane people I work with their artists.
Speaker 1: It's been a long time writing, you know, and they
Speaker 1: constantly write. Then it's trying to figure out, well, how
Speaker 1: do we put this up? How much should we put out?
Speaker 1: And to your point, should we just do a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of singles? That doesn't resonate for certain artists and
Speaker 1: it really resonates for other artists. You know a lot
Speaker 1: of young artists, you know, they don't even care really
Speaker 1: about doing not doing albums. They can just put single left,
Speaker 1: a single after single after single and have a super
Speaker 1: healthy career. You look at DJs like Calvin Harris, one
Speaker 1: of the most successful recorded music artists of the past
Speaker 1: ten years. No one really cares about the albums because
Speaker 1: it's song driven, event driven. He does the show, it's
Speaker 1: an event. It's the biggest residency or maybe he goes
Speaker 1: on tour in a stadium somewhere in South America, whatever
Speaker 1: happens to be. That's a completely different business. It's just
Speaker 1: another silo um. But with the people that I work
Speaker 1: with and looking at the path turn as you say,
Speaker 1: maybe it's this album over three or four years, maybe
Speaker 1: it's you know, some music in between or separate projetrotects.
Speaker 1: Albums can come um really quick, one after the other. Well,
Speaker 1: you look at Paul, it was like two years from
Speaker 1: his Egypt station to McCartney three. It was two years.
Speaker 1: But then McCarty three wasn't planned. He was supposed to
Speaker 1: be on tour in Europe and doing Glastonbury that year,
Speaker 1: and there were a whole other plans, family stuff, private stuff,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with music at all. He had a
Speaker 1: whole year matth t there's no plan to do an album,
Speaker 1: just wasn't meant to be. But he's not one to
Speaker 1: sit around and just sort of put his feet up.
Speaker 1: He would go to the studio every day, which was
Speaker 1: around the corner from his house in England. You just
Speaker 1: go in there and he just sit and work away,
Speaker 1: clean up a few old things, working a few new things.
Speaker 1: And before you knew he had an album, and he
Speaker 1: wasn't sure he had an album yet. Think about it.
Speaker 1: He's got I got all these songs. I think it's
Speaker 1: an album. You know, that was the question, And I
Speaker 1: think that's the healthiest attitude to have a put a
Speaker 1: collection of songs here, we all sit down, what should
Speaker 1: we do with it? Should I put this out? Why
Speaker 1: should I put how to put it up? You know?
Speaker 1: So every artist has again you lumped them all into
Speaker 1: one formula or one system. I think you just got
Speaker 1: to take them all individually, see what their own desires
Speaker 1: and ambitions are for that music or that project, and
Speaker 1: try and help them realize it. So I'm game for anything.
Speaker 1: Whatever anyone wants to do it. So I was like,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's go with it. Okay, how many
Speaker 1: artists you have on the roster? Now? I have no idea?
Speaker 1: Um in Maverick, like we were a group of partners,
Speaker 1: we all have our own rosters. So I got my roster.
Speaker 1: We have some shared services, some shared staff. Um, so
Speaker 1: I is now and again dip in to help other
Speaker 1: people out. They might dip in to help me out,
Speaker 1: Like I'm quarterback in the red hole. Chili Pepper's record
Speaker 1: with guy right now? Um you know, so he's like,
Speaker 1: I haven't put an album for a few years. Can
Speaker 1: you help me on the album projectin't sure, you know,
Speaker 1: because I feel like I'm on the the album released
Speaker 1: treadmill of being very up to date with how certain
Speaker 1: records should be put up. So I help him and
Speaker 1: his team on that. It's good for me to do
Speaker 1: because it helps me stay on top of my game.
Speaker 1: It's not that complicated. I don't really deal with the band.
Speaker 1: I just deal with label and our team and what
Speaker 1: we should be doing on a global basis to try
Speaker 1: and make this record happen and deliver and be creative
Speaker 1: around it. So I see that as kind of fun
Speaker 1: for me. It's a big records, an amazing record, great band,
Speaker 1: um and so I do a bunch of that. But
Speaker 1: with my roster is Paul, It's Sny Twain, Andrea Chelli, Morrissey, Um,
Speaker 1: I got Andrea Chelli's son Mateo Rich Kelly, who we
Speaker 1: sugn to Capitol, who's just been putting a couple of
Speaker 1: singles as the Sirie Castleman, Sint Pierre Revo, the actress,
Speaker 1: and we had her music project with birth um and
Speaker 1: again that was sort of a fun thing. She's she's
Speaker 1: having so much success in film and television. Um, you
Speaker 1: know that she wanted to try music as a solo artist.
Speaker 1: It's going to take time because she's so busy in
Speaker 1: film and television. Um. And then across the company between
Speaker 1: you two Chili Peppers, Madonna is over on the guy
Speaker 1: side and the big country side, Clarence Baulding, Jason Oldeen,
Speaker 1: Danish Rucker, Reva McIntire, books and Done, Um, Morgan Wallen
Speaker 1: um Man with g Robertson trying to think his own
Speaker 1: jeez roster right now. You know he's in the hip
Speaker 1: hop world. Let's go back a few years. So you're
Speaker 1: running your own independent company and Irving as all starts
Speaker 1: to roll up management companies. And he had a very
Speaker 1: specific formula. You know, he wrote you a check based
Speaker 1: on certain revenues and you have to earn it out.
Speaker 1: What incent advise you to go from independent to going
Speaker 1: to work with Irving's actually sort of learned, you know,
Speaker 1: when you don't need the money, it's not financially driven. Um,
Speaker 1: you think, how do I actually grow what I'm doing?
Speaker 1: How do I build a bigger network? I always felt
Speaker 1: like some of my UK because I'm British, as you know,
Speaker 1: some of my UK manager colleagues like people like the
Speaker 1: Richard Griffiths of the world or E. Mcanderon all these
Speaker 1: other great UK managers. None of them spent other than
Speaker 1: Richard when he was at LABEL. Obviously, you had to
Speaker 1: spend time on the ground in the US if you're
Speaker 1: going to service your artists on a global basis, unless
Speaker 1: they were big enough where you just open an office
Speaker 1: in New staff and they're going to deal with everything
Speaker 1: over there. I wanted to be on the ground, and
Speaker 1: Irving gave me that ability. You know. I had an
Speaker 1: office in l A for about five or six years
Speaker 1: before I sorry in New York before I spoke with Irving,
Speaker 1: but just to sort of get a better level of connectivity,
Speaker 1: and he certainly helped me get that. You know, you
Speaker 1: want to learn from him. As soon as I did
Speaker 1: a deal with Irving, Roger Rains, who was part of
Speaker 1: Irving's team, based himself in my office, you know. And
Speaker 1: Roger I remember as a kid that was managing Buork
Speaker 1: and Roger was sort of CEO of Warner at the time,
Speaker 1: and being terrified going in to have meetings with him
Speaker 1: because he was a global chairman. Um to then have
Speaker 1: him in your office and have him help you. They
Speaker 1: are of dealmaking, They are of uh negotiation. Roger is
Speaker 1: a math genius. He is the one person who you
Speaker 1: can still have a cup of tea and he'll draw
Speaker 1: a whole deal with all the tax issues, everything on
Speaker 1: the back of a napkin. One of the most brilliant
Speaker 1: men I've ever worked with. So, having Roger in my
Speaker 1: office for six years, what I had learned it was invaluable. No,
Speaker 1: he became a real mentor to me, unbelievably growing. So
Speaker 1: that was my benefit really, you know, it was like,
Speaker 1: imagine you've going back to do do a master's you know,
Speaker 1: in your craft. That's what it was for me. So
Speaker 1: I think, if I want my game, if I want
Speaker 1: to work with bigger artists, more demanding artists, the only
Speaker 1: way I can do it is by being better myself. Okay,
Speaker 1: so Irving and Rapino or running Live Nation. Then it's
Speaker 1: Irving's out and it's just Rapino. And it evolves into
Speaker 1: what is now Maverick, what changed in their transition and
Speaker 1: is how is your business different under this heading as
Speaker 1: opposed to the old one. The whole Maverick concept was
Speaker 1: an easy one. Look at it as a collective. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a corporation. It's a collective of like minded people.
Speaker 1: It's a knowledge based you know. And the concept of
Speaker 1: putting Maverick together again was really really simple on paper.
Speaker 1: Can we as a group of friends who all know
Speaker 1: each other long established relationships, can we together and this
Speaker 1: is nothing financial and nothing business like. Can we leverage
Speaker 1: the power of a lot of really big artists in
Speaker 1: different genres to create opportunity for them? That was the concept.
Speaker 1: You can we do better for our artists? Can we
Speaker 1: bring them more by trying to leverage them collectively? It
Speaker 1: could be a brand new start up. Imagine if it
Speaker 1: was Twitter Mark two. Oh, we all come off Twitter
Speaker 1: Mark one and go into Twitter Mark too. Can we
Speaker 1: get all the artist equity? Very very bad concerts suggestion there,
Speaker 1: But that was the concept. It was really really simple.
Speaker 1: What happens in those situations? Are some of the individuals
Speaker 1: become so astronomically successful because their artists are hitting and
Speaker 1: they get this and off they go And that's sort
Speaker 1: of okay because the whole concept was can we try
Speaker 1: and bring opportunity, which we did um for the artists,
Speaker 1: you know, And then it comes down to the core.
Speaker 1: We're all like minded, we all help each other out,
Speaker 1: we all have respect for each other, you know, and
Speaker 1: the business is exactly the same, nothing changed. It kind
Speaker 1: of works like a law firm. You have your own
Speaker 1: client roster. You could have a hundred clients, you have
Speaker 1: three clients, you have a hundred, you might earn more
Speaker 1: than the guys cut three, you know, So it just
Speaker 1: all downe to the individual and their motivation. I could
Speaker 1: really really type team that are very, very long established,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's really like a family between London
Speaker 1: and l A great team of staff. How many people,
Speaker 1: uh tenoral living I think not alone, really tight if
Speaker 1: we need. Paul's team is different because Paul was very specific.
Speaker 1: When I work with him, he's he's He's like, I
Speaker 1: want you to build a team for me that I
Speaker 1: pay for so that when I fired you. This is
Speaker 1: my first ever meeting. So when I fired you just
Speaker 1: put someone else in and the teams there and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I kind of laughed, and I'm like, Okay, there's probably
Speaker 1: oone else in the world who could say that, And
Speaker 1: that's what we did. So we get a team about
Speaker 1: another ten people over on Pole's side who do nothing
Speaker 1: but Paul McCartney. UM, and very specific jobs as well. UM.
Speaker 1: We call it like a production company while the management company. UM.
Speaker 1: So everything he does is in house. His whole world
Speaker 1: is in the house. Nothing's out of house. All creative
Speaker 1: in house, all the photography, archiving, in management, the databasing,
Speaker 1: the the online team, everything is in house. They don't
Speaker 1: do anyone else by him, and he's probably the only
Speaker 1: artist who's in a position to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: and every other artist, no matter how big, they don't
Speaker 1: have that. They don't have that facility. So it works
Speaker 1: again like a law firm. We all work as hard
Speaker 1: or or not as hard as we want to work,
Speaker 1: and we get paid as much as we work or
Speaker 1: successful as our artists are. Okay, but in this particular case,
Speaker 1: you're mentioning helping guy out with red hot chili peppers,
Speaker 1: uh when you take them. But then guy helps me
Speaker 1: and other stuff as well, So it kind of goes
Speaker 1: back and forth. Okay, So there's not an issue of compensation.
Speaker 1: You don't feel like, Hey, I did this work I
Speaker 1: didn't get paid for. It really goes around because God
Speaker 1: brings opportunity for the office. Because he's such a big
Speaker 1: focus on start ups, tech and the whole new world
Speaker 1: that he loves being part of. And he's very successful
Speaker 1: at and none again. And he has an open door
Speaker 1: whenever there's big presentations, any of the office want to
Speaker 1: come in, anyone want to come and see this or
Speaker 1: something great that might be appropriate for this aufice of
Speaker 1: this aufice. So he's always bringing opportunities, you know, and
Speaker 1: he's great at introductions. He's just super network. The relationship
Speaker 1: really works. You know, we've been friends with twenty five years,
Speaker 1: um so it's not a new relationships. Traditionally management was
Speaker 1: either usually fifteen percent sometimes twenty. Irving charges fifteen percent
Speaker 1: with no contract. What do you charge and do you
Speaker 1: have a contract? In the very HEAs artists the artists,
Speaker 1: um I would say, there's two very distinct styles of commission.
Speaker 1: It was the European style, which was gross on advances
Speaker 1: and third party revenue. Say, if you did a deal
Speaker 1: with the sneaker company or whatever, it would be, but
Speaker 1: on touring, it will be of net after all costs.
Speaker 1: So the European model sounds like oh it's great, it
Speaker 1: actually works out less than across. You get lesson advances,
Speaker 1: but your number is known um so U style traditionally
Speaker 1: fift like dirving model and in Europe of cross advances,
Speaker 1: but net net on oud a mixture through my whole career,
Speaker 1: some UK European style. It's whatever makes you feel is
Speaker 1: making the artice happy. Have some deals in I have
Speaker 1: no contracts because if you're not any good or it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, okay, take hands and you can move on.
Speaker 1: You know, I would never litigate against an artist, no
Speaker 1: matter how badly you may be worked over, because the
Speaker 1: first thing that people will do today, if you're an artist,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna google this guy and the last thing you
Speaker 1: want to see is so and so is suing this
Speaker 1: office is for non payment of commission or something. And
Speaker 1: it's like, I'm not going to go work with that guy.
Speaker 1: I think you always want to put the office first.
Speaker 1: They're not always right, but you still want to support them,
Speaker 1: and the office comes first. Model is always work for me.
Speaker 1: Um and I have this argument with some promoters that
Speaker 1: they believe it or not. It's like you're really not
Speaker 1: gonna let them hit their bonus points because there were
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars on the threshold. The artist friendly look
Speaker 1: after the artist. Artists comes first, look after them. Everything
Speaker 1: else works out. So again, different styles of deals. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's not commission on every revenue stream. Sometimes it's different
Speaker 1: commissions on different revenue streams. It's gotten really complex. So
Speaker 1: what we have to do even with no contract, just
Speaker 1: a basic term of agreement. This is how we agree
Speaker 1: to be compensated. And if something is not work can
Speaker 1: you go back and say this is great, let's change it.
Speaker 1: It's too little because this is what we brought in
Speaker 1: in this field and it always gets worked up. You
Speaker 1: just have to have that healthy conversation. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: promotion deals. You know, there was the roll up that
Speaker 1: will ultimately became Live Nation. Ultimately uh, Philly and Shouts
Speaker 1: brought concerts west, it became a G. Now you have
Speaker 1: certain philosophies, the Q prime philosophy where we would rather
Speaker 1: go market by market, work with the independence and we
Speaker 1: can make more money uh going that way. Then there's
Speaker 1: most of the big acts are taking national or international tours,
Speaker 1: making a deal with Live Nation or a G. What
Speaker 1: is your philosophy? Again, there's no one size fistul It
Speaker 1: is down to the office. A lot of artists like
Speaker 1: saying we take Paul mccarny do a monster Live Nation
Speaker 1: or a Monster a G deal if he wanted to,
Speaker 1: but chooses not to. Still likes to work with all
Speaker 1: of the independence that he has history with. Shows will
Speaker 1: always be mixed up between Live Nation and a G
Speaker 1: sometimes with the promoter who was brought into one of
Speaker 1: their folds. Very loyal tries to flip Eastern West Coast
Speaker 1: shows unless there was a G. The stem up Live
Speaker 1: Nation tries to keep a level playing field. Some artists,
Speaker 1: even the ones that I don't work with, like to
Speaker 1: do that huge deal. Maybe it's jay Z, maybe it's
Speaker 1: Beyonce or whoever. They'll like to do that deal with
Speaker 1: a big check. And I'm trying to see that from
Speaker 1: the office point of view. If someone brought your check
Speaker 1: for a hundred million dollars, a childred million dollars, I'm
Speaker 1: sure if you're smart business advisors, that money over the
Speaker 1: course of a year could be really well and ested.
Speaker 1: So maybe that money as equity at the start is
Speaker 1: right for that specific artists, Whereas if you go through
Speaker 1: the c Prime model market by market, promoter by promoter um,
Speaker 1: that might just be their philosophy, and that's okay if
Speaker 1: it's right for that artist, because they'll have that conversation
Speaker 1: with the artist, this is how we want to do it.
Speaker 1: Are you good with that? You know? Whereas but the
Speaker 1: cute prime model metallicas seem to do more Live Nation
Speaker 1: shows than independent shows, different internationally than it is in
Speaker 1: the US. So I think there's no one size at all.
Speaker 1: You know, some promoters get the big ones a G
Speaker 1: and Live Nation will get aggressive on Feast for certain
Speaker 1: tours and I bid each other. Um, so the authors
Speaker 1: tends to win in that instance if they go with
Speaker 1: one of those promoters. Um, I'm sort of fairly never
Speaker 1: been the same no matter who it is. If the
Speaker 1: artice has history, they love a specific promoter, well that's
Speaker 1: just going to do their show. That Sigma around the Okay,
Speaker 1: he's always done our true that's who's going to do it,
Speaker 1: you know. Or if it's Ja Marciano in the US,
Speaker 1: let's just do it and we work with Jason's Universal
Speaker 1: Concidize or something. Whatever the office wants to do, you
Speaker 1: make it work, there's no question. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: you want harmony. The record company situation has changed, you know,
Speaker 1: with the New century. Used to be pretty much certainly
Speaker 1: in the US, you were dead in the water as
Speaker 1: an independent without going into why, uh, everything is up
Speaker 1: for grabs now, Okay, anybody can get their record distributed
Speaker 1: through tune Core or another CD baby, etcetera. The major
Speaker 1: labels tend to sign things that have already been developed
Speaker 1: online as opposed to developing things themselves. And you can
Speaker 1: negotiate for things that were harder to negotiate for before,
Speaker 1: you know, return of rights, owning masters, higher percentage royalty.
Speaker 1: What is your view on whether you need a label
Speaker 1: or not and whether to sign or not and what
Speaker 1: kind of deal you can make? Again, I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm a broken record here. It stands an individual artist
Speaker 1: having done every single conceivable deal known to man with
Speaker 1: different artists, and and did this a lot with Arcade Fire,
Speaker 1: who I worked with for twelve years or so, who
Speaker 1: did that, did their first five albums, and in the
Speaker 1: beginning they had eight different licenses that you know, on
Speaker 1: their first album they paid for it themselves, licensed to
Speaker 1: eight different labels, and they ended up being paid probably
Speaker 1: for selling about a million albums worldwide. They probably got
Speaker 1: conversated on the five million albums, so they were really, really,
Speaker 1: really well paid because of the nature of their independent deals.
Speaker 1: Now that feels like a bit of an anomaly because
Speaker 1: that was a physical buying market along with Apple digital downloads.
Speaker 1: This is pre streaming, you know, in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: two six, when the first album came up, and they
Speaker 1: really benefited from that all the way through every album
Speaker 1: that came out until probably their last album, you know,
Speaker 1: when streaming was really the most dominant partner. Um by
Speaker 1: being creative with all of their independent deals. When they
Speaker 1: finally went over to major deal, they had split territory deals,
Speaker 1: really short licenses, five year licenses, records come back. So
Speaker 1: in my short twelve years with this band, did the
Speaker 1: same with publishing. Publishing deal ends. Oh we're going to
Speaker 1: sign the whole catalog again. There are three albums, are
Speaker 1: four albums. They really reaped the reward from owning the
Speaker 1: masters so they can be super creative. When they were
Speaker 1: that hot commodity, every major wanted to sign and overpay
Speaker 1: for but really short licenses. They signed the catalog, they
Speaker 1: pull it back, signed a new album, catalog would start
Speaker 1: reverting from another label. Really really creative deals. So that's
Speaker 1: that's probably one of the most exciting unusual situations I've
Speaker 1: ever dealt with and again I learned a lot from it.
Speaker 1: Today new artists, let's say Seceria, who we work with,
Speaker 1: imagine Daniel hadn't introduced me to and she had no
Speaker 1: record deal. We could do anything that we wanted to do. Now,
Speaker 1: if you go with a model where you just want
Speaker 1: to own all yourself and work it yourself, we need
Speaker 1: a bit of capital for marketing and video, and you know,
Speaker 1: we could do like a rights deal with b MG
Speaker 1: or whoever. If we didn't really want to enter into
Speaker 1: long term negotiation, we could do that. You know, it's
Speaker 1: a lot more work on the artist team, huge amount
Speaker 1: of work, more staff, resources becomes really expensive. But then
Speaker 1: you have to look at how competitive are you and
Speaker 1: that's where the major labels come in. If you have
Speaker 1: an artist who's really competitive, they have a big project,
Speaker 1: they really want it delivered globally, not just us, they
Speaker 1: want to globally delivered. You need a major label, I think, UM.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is they're just so streamlined
Speaker 1: in the way that they work today. You find your team,
Speaker 1: you have a great team. You know, everything works really
Speaker 1: really efficiently. UM. You actually save money on because of
Speaker 1: the amount of ad space they buy each year. Their
Speaker 1: their cost per ad is way more efficient than something
Speaker 1: that you r I could go and buy tomorrow for
Speaker 1: the same space because they buy it more weeks a
Speaker 1: year than you or I would buy, So you cost
Speaker 1: them down a little bit. More opportunity will come to
Speaker 1: them because those companies are so big now. They because
Speaker 1: such you know, unique dedicated departments that work on you know, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm only work with you know, apps and right share companies,
Speaker 1: and this is an opportunity to command and like all
Speaker 1: the stuff you can't do on your own. If you're
Speaker 1: really depend you've just made a cool little record and
Speaker 1: you're happy with that. You think we're gonna sell ten
Speaker 1: thousand of these equivalents. We want to be paid five
Speaker 1: dollars a unit equivalent. You might just do it yourself
Speaker 1: and then you're happy with that, you know. So it's
Speaker 1: all depends on the autice and how they want to compete.
Speaker 1: A lot of authors I find there like, no, we
Speaker 1: want to be huge, We really want to be huge.
Speaker 1: At that point, you've got to think, Okay, how do
Speaker 1: we get them there and not be too concerned. Be
Speaker 1: concerned about the rights and the rights management, but don't
Speaker 1: be too concerned about how much money you're going to
Speaker 1: make off that album if you're agenders. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the beginning. So where did you grow up.
Speaker 1: I grew up in Glasgow, Glasgow? Okay, what was your
Speaker 1: family situation, what your parents do for living? How many
Speaker 1: kids in the family. My mom and dad split when
Speaker 1: I was six. My dad remarried when I was twelve.
Speaker 1: My mom was a hairdresser. My dad was a cooper,
Speaker 1: so he made barrels for whiskey. He made what, um barrels,
Speaker 1: wooden barrels. Really yeah, um, which was kind of fun. Actually,
Speaker 1: I never drink whiskey because I think instead of just
Speaker 1: surrounded by as a kid, um, and you drink beer, yeah,
Speaker 1: drink wine of love. Tequila does not whiskey. Yeah, Whiskey
Speaker 1: is just it was like everywhere I felt like it
Speaker 1: was surrounded by it when I was a kid because
Speaker 1: that was my dad's industry. Uh. And I get two
Speaker 1: half brothers and half sister. One lives in Melbourne, one Australia,
Speaker 1: one lives in leon and France and once they lives
Speaker 1: in Glasgow. My mom still lives in Glasgow. My dad
Speaker 1: passed on. You're growing up in Glasgow. Are you a
Speaker 1: good student? Bad student? Popular? Not popular? Popular student, not
Speaker 1: the best student? Because I got distracted. There's there's two
Speaker 1: school levels in the UK. There's no middle school, so
Speaker 1: it's essentially primary school and secondary school. There's no middle
Speaker 1: school before high school. So that probably when I was
Speaker 1: about living twelve years old, discovered funk groper music. You know,
Speaker 1: it was the Clash, it was the sex pistols, it
Speaker 1: was Ramons, everything that came, and then enjoy Division came
Speaker 1: after that and it was like I just got consumed.
Speaker 1: And the whole strategy at that point was how can
Speaker 1: I go and see all these bands play live with
Speaker 1: me and my friends? So we go and see every
Speaker 1: show that came through tom There was a lot of them. Um,
Speaker 1: we would travel to go see shows. You know it
Speaker 1: that became the obsession and then you're instead of high
Speaker 1: school bands, you're trying to how do we make this?
Speaker 1: I want to be a rock star. Okay, so how
Speaker 1: did you pick up an instrument? And what were you
Speaker 1: in the band? My my dad bought me a guitar
Speaker 1: or the cost thirty pounds. It wasn't very good, but
Speaker 1: that was it. I brought an amplifier for five pounds
Speaker 1: for a friend of a friend. It was terrible, you know.
Speaker 1: It was really small one and you know, and you
Speaker 1: just sit in your bedroom with song books and trying
Speaker 1: to listen to records and then make the records. You know.
Speaker 1: I was I could pass, but I wasn't that great.
Speaker 1: You've learned pretty soon you're not that great. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you finished secondary school. What's your next what's your next move? Um?
Speaker 1: I went to London to stay with a friend for
Speaker 1: a weekend and then went back. Now you're in London,
Speaker 1: what's what's your viewpoint? What's your agenda? What are you
Speaker 1: gonna do? Immediately it's like, I'm like, okay, I got
Speaker 1: to find a job, just try and pay rent. My
Speaker 1: friend had an apartment, found a job in a photography
Speaker 1: studio doing that, which was really cool and I was
Speaker 1: really well paid for my age. My dad said he
Speaker 1: give me a gap year between school and university. Um,
Speaker 1: and I'm like okay. So I sort of had his
Speaker 1: blessing slightly. I was sort of being groomed to be
Speaker 1: an accountant. And I was friends with this band on
Speaker 1: four a D part of Martin Mills Empire. It was
Speaker 1: run by Iva wats Russell, and I was friends with
Speaker 1: the band of cop to the Twins. Robin got Freelizbeth Fraser.
Speaker 1: Robin still one of my best friends to this day.
Speaker 1: And they stayed in our apartment for a while because
Speaker 1: they were trying to find a place to live in London.
Speaker 1: There were also Scottish stay closed for about six months,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm super fun time. And then Robin said, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a band on our label who are auditioning for
Speaker 1: bass players. You should go do it. And I did
Speaker 1: and I got in the band. So I left the
Speaker 1: Toby studio job. This is all within six months of
Speaker 1: moving to London, and I joined the band who were
Speaker 1: still going m a band called Dead Can Dance who
Speaker 1: was sort of this early and he's so I wasn't
Speaker 1: Deck and Dance for the first two albums. What did
Speaker 1: your father say about the gap you're knowing the university? Well,
Speaker 1: he wasn't cool about it. He's like, okay, and then
Speaker 1: we put a record on it, and all right, you
Speaker 1: got a record on And he came to see us
Speaker 1: play alive and he's seen there were like two and
Speaker 1: a half thousand people there and he's like actually they
Speaker 1: kind of liked you, and I said, yeah, we're doing okay.
Speaker 1: He went, all right, he gave me a bit more rope.
Speaker 1: He just kept feeding it because he actually seen that
Speaker 1: it didn't look as though I was wasting my time
Speaker 1: just you know, being a lay about doing nothing. Um
Speaker 1: very quickly and this is a moly, but the time
Speaker 1: years old or something very quickly learned, once you start
Speaker 1: playing festivals or you're playing with other bands, were really amazing.
Speaker 1: You sort of figure out actually and kind of just
Speaker 1: getting by. Here am I going to get caught up
Speaker 1: because I'm not that good? It's good fun. And everyone
Speaker 1: in the band was five years older than me, which
Speaker 1: seems like ancient at that age. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: as you're an adult, but when you're really young, five
Speaker 1: years is a long time. They were. I was the
Speaker 1: youngest kid there, and I decided it's time I'm stepping
Speaker 1: back because they were going to musical direction. That wasn't
Speaker 1: really the guitar based drums set up. It was definitely
Speaker 1: more orchestrated and more sort of ambitious. And then I
Speaker 1: started to at that point I was a shift to management.
Speaker 1: I was friends with the bandages in marriage and they've
Speaker 1: just been taken on by Chris Morrison. Chris Morrison, who
Speaker 1: again another mentor of mine, great, great, great manager who
Speaker 1: has retired now, who in the eighties managed Living in
Speaker 1: a Box that Are Alive, Thin Lizzing from the seventies
Speaker 1: through eighties Ultra Box. He had had this huge, huge,
Speaker 1: monstrous success, but could see the tide shifting, so he
Speaker 1: went in this more rock alternative zone and he took
Speaker 1: on Jesus, Mary Chane. He took on Blur that became Guerrillas.
Speaker 1: We're still going but Damon from Guerrillas. So he was
Speaker 1: able to anticipate sort of the shift from what was
Speaker 1: going on. And I started working with Jesus and Mary
Speaker 1: Change because they were friends. And then I worked with
Speaker 1: Chris for a number of years and that kind of
Speaker 1: became my start of working in management and working for
Speaker 1: other managers, some really really great, some not so great.
Speaker 1: But that was kind of my schooling until I started
Speaker 1: on my own when I was about twenty five. Okay,
Speaker 1: what was your motivation and what do you do for acts?
Speaker 1: Going independent? Oh, that's when I started. That's when I
Speaker 1: started company. It was the hardest thing. The hardest thing
Speaker 1: was to get because you know what it's like. We
Speaker 1: had a conversation on commission splits. So let's say your young,
Speaker 1: hot new band. You're like, they're going to choose a
Speaker 1: Richard Griffiths who's called you know, Global Success, or they
Speaker 1: choose an Ian Montone or a John Silva, you know,
Speaker 1: or they go to Cute Prime. All these big companies.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants you and they all charge. Is saying, right,
Speaker 1: I'll to go with this kid who has no company,
Speaker 1: no track record. He charges the same as everybody else
Speaker 1: as well. Who do we choose? And that's always the
Speaker 1: tough thing, you know, And it's worked to my benefit
Speaker 1: a few times by not being the biggest guy in
Speaker 1: the room. You know, like the best opportunities to me
Speaker 1: has happened because I wasn't the biggest guy in the room. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you go independent with what acts? And then what
Speaker 1: do you do next? The first two at first two
Speaker 1: acts I had was one was called the Sneaker Pimps,
Speaker 1: who had one one very big hit single off the
Speaker 1: back of the movie The Saint the Belcolm or movie
Speaker 1: the same and the had a song called six on
Speaker 1: the Ground that I got to think top five in
Speaker 1: the US the album went top five. I think we
Speaker 1: did about a million albums in the US. You know,
Speaker 1: we were I think we never have had a number one,
Speaker 1: but we're always top five aorund the world. And that
Speaker 1: was in the days of when there was so much
Speaker 1: money in movie promotion. They flew the band around the world,
Speaker 1: play every premiere, Premier in Madrid, premier in Paris, premier
Speaker 1: in the premier New York. So this band sort of
Speaker 1: started getting you know, we're flying around the world doing
Speaker 1: most of promo at a movie company's expense. And probably
Speaker 1: about six months after it took them on, I took
Speaker 1: on Pure so be York could be in the Sugar
Speaker 1: Cubes if I work with at the time, so we
Speaker 1: had an established relations. Okay, so you worked with Sugar
Speaker 1: Sugar Cubes when you work for the other company. And
Speaker 1: she ultimately decided to go independent, leave the band. Were
Speaker 1: you part of that? She came to you and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm independent. It was very much a case of we
Speaker 1: just caught up socially, hanging out, went for lunch and
Speaker 1: she said, you know, we just said she didn't had
Speaker 1: what he'd been up to, and I went, well, I
Speaker 1: just started managing you know this man speak of him.
Speaker 1: She went, I need a manager? You want to manage me?
Speaker 1: And I went sure? And it was so organic and natural.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like I wasnt part of the what we
Speaker 1: call the beauty parade where she's meeting ten managers. She
Speaker 1: just wanted someone she knew that she was comfortable way.
Speaker 1: And that's when I felt, I'm out of my depth.
Speaker 1: It's like, how am I going to do this? Because
Speaker 1: she just exploded. Um, and that was learning as I went.
Speaker 1: But such a great school to go to. At that age.
Speaker 1: She was famous already, but really when she went independent
Speaker 1: her solo, she was truly seen as an artist making
Speaker 1: decisions that not everybody else would make correct, absolutely correct,
Speaker 1: you know, and a lot of she was someone who
Speaker 1: was very Again you learn from working with these artists,
Speaker 1: all of them are different. She is the purest artist
Speaker 1: I've ever worked with. And what I mean by that
Speaker 1: is she never wanted to sort of have her face
Speaker 1: in an ad, you know, for cosmetics or jewelry or something.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to accept money from brands. She turned
Speaker 1: down millions on millions of dollars. And she was not
Speaker 1: a rich artist, you know. She just went I can't
Speaker 1: do it. I can't do it. The closest we ever
Speaker 1: got to taking money with Steve Jobs. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the tour two thousand, two dozen one, just before
Speaker 1: nine living. We managed to secure meeting with Steve Jobs,
Speaker 1: much to the reluctance of his team. They gave us
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes be the four Seasons and fifty seven Street
Speaker 1: at seven thirty am. You got fifteen minutes or thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: We had a really short time we got there. Trying
Speaker 1: to get Buerk there at that time was something and
Speaker 1: she was doing a tour. And this is just when
Speaker 1: airport first came out, and you know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: use airport on stage. We're gonna send little computer files
Speaker 1: back and forth, and American use airport up front, you know,
Speaker 1: for merchandise people beon Mac terminals and or the merchandise
Speaker 1: for from remote computers, things that today sound really easy.
Speaker 1: When WiFi wasn't everywhere, you needed one of these stations
Speaker 1: to get WiFi. And that's not that long ago. And Steve,
Speaker 1: we've got a meeting and she just charmed depends off Dejols.
Speaker 1: He canceled his next two meetings with to hours with
Speaker 1: Steve jobs. You could see his people were livid, but
Speaker 1: she was just talking about her artistic and creative philosophy
Speaker 1: and why she used his products and what we wanted
Speaker 1: to try and do and it's going to use it.
Speaker 1: And we'd love to try and secure a million dollars
Speaker 1: because what we're doing with this tour, with orchestras and stuff,
Speaker 1: it would really expensive and we're trying to keep ticket
Speaker 1: prices low. Even let me come back to you twenty
Speaker 1: four hours later, Okay, we'll give you all the equipment
Speaker 1: you want, will give you the money. In two tiyears
Speaker 1: and they were in and then none, no liven half
Speaker 1: and then everything for us. No one knew what was
Speaker 1: happening in the world. It gave us a bunch of equipment,
Speaker 1: didn't give us any money. But then Steve was charmed
Speaker 1: and he called up and he's like, okay, I want
Speaker 1: to offer TV commercial really simple, there's no fee. I'll
Speaker 1: give her as much equipment as she wants forever for
Speaker 1: black and white, her creative manifesto, no product, no nothing,
Speaker 1: just her talking about her creative her creative mind and
Speaker 1: her creative manifesto. And at the end it goes to
Speaker 1: black and we've got the white apple symbol on a
Speaker 1: black screen. That's it. No voice over, no nothing, no
Speaker 1: heart cell and told the orchids and she's like, oh god,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. She said, let me think about it,
Speaker 1: and was in a car with her somewhere I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to Coachella, of all places. We're
Speaker 1: driving there. I'm just driving her in the car and
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs calls. She hasn't go back to me, what's happening?
Speaker 1: You know. He was kind of getting because he's used
Speaker 1: to get in his way, But why don't you speak
Speaker 1: to her yourself and put her on? And she's like, Steve,
Speaker 1: this is the best offer I've ever had from a
Speaker 1: big corporation. You know, I love you, you do love
Speaker 1: your products, but I'm punk rock. I can't say yes
Speaker 1: into the TV ap And she never did it. And
Speaker 1: what did he say? He's like he respected her even
Speaker 1: more because just you know, like Bork became, she wanted
Speaker 1: to go more into art world, and I was hanging
Speaker 1: out with her at the weekend, which was really great
Speaker 1: for her shows in l a Um. You know, we're
Speaker 1: still friends and you know, like we grew up together,
Speaker 1: you know, so my heart is still there, you know.
Speaker 1: With her as a person, I really admire her. But
Speaker 1: when she got into apps at the beginning of app development,
Speaker 1: she was one of the first artists who made apps
Speaker 1: for songs, and Steve helped him make the apps. He
Speaker 1: introduced it to the right people, he funded a bunch
Speaker 1: of it. He really helped her. And then I met
Speaker 1: Steve just before he passed away. He came to one
Speaker 1: of Polls shows in San Francisco and he was really
Speaker 1: unwell at this time. He sat side the stage and
Speaker 1: we chat and said, you probably don't remember me, Steve,
Speaker 1: because about eight nine years have passed, but you know
Speaker 1: I worked with you. And He's like, I love that girl.
Speaker 1: She's the only person who ever said no, the only
Speaker 1: person who ever said no. And you know she's good.
Speaker 1: You know I helped her out with the as. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know you helped her out with the apps and stuff.
Speaker 1: She's gone. She is just a creative inspiration. The world
Speaker 1: needs more people like that. You know. He was so
Speaker 1: generous with his words of praise. Um for someone who
Speaker 1: was never a global icon or you know, on on
Speaker 1: stadium level artist, she was. She did her own thing,
Speaker 1: and she was difficult as an artist, but as a
Speaker 1: genuine artist. Okay, so you're me and pure, how do
Speaker 1: you work your way to our kid? Fire had a
Speaker 1: few of the smaller artists. That one was called Alabama
Speaker 1: three who only they loved that. They licensed the song
Speaker 1: to sopranos and that was the one thing that they did.
Speaker 1: Um probably the most successful sink in history because of
Speaker 1: the way that was still television deals weren't like they
Speaker 1: were now, so they were banned to the gift that
Speaker 1: kept giving that point. Your licensed for a prop pilot,
Speaker 1: you licensed for season one, Oh, your license for home
Speaker 1: video DVDs? Come out with a license for DVD now
Speaker 1: and it kept wait wait wait. The rumor on that
Speaker 1: is that they got a very low fee. What's the reality. No,
Speaker 1: the fee was never huge. There was just a lot
Speaker 1: of fees. So you've got a fee for the pilot.
Speaker 1: Then you got a fee for season one, and home
Speaker 1: video via Chess came out, you got a fee for that,
Speaker 1: and DVD came out. You got a FIFA that the
Speaker 1: season two came out, you got a FIFA that, you
Speaker 1: got a fee phone video d for DVD, and you
Speaker 1: went through every season get a fee and the fee
Speaker 1: would go up, so it became quite healthy until the
Speaker 1: last season of sopranocos Um, David Chase, the creator, did
Speaker 1: this huge Vanity Fair spread, you know, the great any
Speaker 1: Labats pull out cover with the whole castle Sopranos, really stunning,
Speaker 1: stunning photo. Remember reading the interview about how at that point,
Speaker 1: which seems smaller now but this is haven't been a
Speaker 1: long time ago, how they had made almost a billion
Speaker 1: dollars from the franchise. Because we've got to remember that time.
Speaker 1: Every holiday birthday someone to give you a books at
Speaker 1: or season two of the Sopranos season season one to five,
Speaker 1: you kept buying it. Again, it was a gift given
Speaker 1: thing because everybody watched DVDs or VHS box sets, and
Speaker 1: they made so much money from those physical sales, unbelievable
Speaker 1: amounts of money. It was such a financial earner for
Speaker 1: HBO at that time. So I'm sitting there reading like, wow,
Speaker 1: this sort of almost a billion dollars, And I went
Speaker 1: to Derek Burkeer, who's my best friend in the world,
Speaker 1: who was within the weekend, who runs one little Indian
Speaker 1: Records in London, who Buaquous signed to Alabama three signed too,
Speaker 1: and we're still talking about this. It's unbelievable. We're talking
Speaker 1: about it still, you know. And we said, let's say
Speaker 1: no when they when the license agreement comes in further
Speaker 1: the final season, Sopranos, Let's just say no and see
Speaker 1: what they say, you know, because they're not going to
Speaker 1: change the song at this stage. Everyone knows you hear
Speaker 1: the beginning of that song, you know, sopranos. So we
Speaker 1: said no, and they were like, what do you mean, no,
Speaker 1: We need the song of the final season. We just
Speaker 1: went no, and of course they probably got the highest
Speaker 1: sink higher than any Beatles song for that final season.
Speaker 1: And then it keeps going. It keeps going because the
Speaker 1: was it The Many Saints in New York. I don't
Speaker 1: forgot the exact title right. The movie that came up recently,
Speaker 1: the prequel with James Gandolfini's Son is a Star. Songs
Speaker 1: not in it, but what is it's in it? Right
Speaker 1: at the end, you just hear a little bit of
Speaker 1: the drum machine and the hairs in the back of
Speaker 1: your next end up because this movie ends. And then
Speaker 1: at that point you know Sourprianos is supposed to start,
Speaker 1: but you hear the song and it's iconic with that,
Speaker 1: with that story, and it's the song that keeps going
Speaker 1: because they're gonna do another movie. They're going to use
Speaker 1: the song, and it's just going to keep going in
Speaker 1: might turning into another series. Um. So of that band,
Speaker 1: who never sold the record, had a whole career off
Speaker 1: the back of that song, kept them going to still going,
Speaker 1: still do little clubs. Well, you know, I was a
Speaker 1: huge fan of that band, and I played an exile
Speaker 1: old Harbor Lane lot and Howard Thompson, the A and
Speaker 1: R guy. Yeah, Howard said, you gotta watch this new show,
Speaker 1: The Sopranos, And I remember it was a rainy day
Speaker 1: at a really odd time. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: Sunday night or something, and I club it's out. I'll
Speaker 1: be able three. Thank you can't believe it. I know.
Speaker 1: That's just as a fan. I said. You know, they
Speaker 1: don't have the whole introduction about the chest of me know,
Speaker 1: oh man, it's unbelievable. So they were there was sort
Speaker 1: of licensed to Geffen from the One Little Indian. You know.
Speaker 1: Mark Kates, who's again who worked on that with me,
Speaker 1: is still one of my dearest dearest friends in the world.
Speaker 1: Um and I remember the colleges gone, this is you
Speaker 1: kind of mafia pilot, you know, and we're like, who
Speaker 1: just licensed? We got to get something going, and that
Speaker 1: was how it stopped um. But then geff and dropped
Speaker 1: them because they spend all this money, nothing happened, and
Speaker 1: then We'll bought one when he was running. Columbia signed
Speaker 1: him straight away. Not a big deal. That w the
Speaker 1: songs I hit. We gotta make this song a hit,
Speaker 1: couldn't make it a hit, you know, so they went
Speaker 1: deal to deal, made a lot of money with the
Speaker 1: advances at the time. It's just one of those really
Speaker 1: really strange stories of a band who had one song
Speaker 1: that was never genuinely a hit, but everybody knows the song,
Speaker 1: which is kind of weird. I've never had that before.
Speaker 1: So then from there to Arcade Far Arcade Fire, where
Speaker 1: you know, just as they were bubbling under, they're still
Speaker 1: playing Mercury Lounge and they're playing really small clubs, the
Speaker 1: Echo and you know, and so on. In l A.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew there's this really cool band and you've seen
Speaker 1: them live, incredible live show. I didn't want a manager,
Speaker 1: but I remember telling Bill Salona, their business manager at
Speaker 1: the time, and dealing bo there the lawyer. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: if they just didn't need any help, you know, happy
Speaker 1: to help them out, you know, even though don't manage them,
Speaker 1: just sort their business out because they're doing all themselves.
Speaker 1: And then about a month after that, Cold Giving Cold said, yeah,
Speaker 1: they they do meetings now and then, just to make
Speaker 1: sure I'm the last meeting, because they met with you know, Mention,
Speaker 1: met with Silver, and they met with everybody. They did
Speaker 1: the whole runs everybody, and I met them in London
Speaker 1: five minutes. It was chaos, and they went, can you
Speaker 1: come to Paris too? Were shown Paris? Like sure, and
Speaker 1: I went to Paris. Then I ended up set of
Speaker 1: same thing. After Paris, it was chaos. Everyone wants to
Speaker 1: meet him, and I'm like, didn't get any time, Like god,
Speaker 1: this is never gonna work. And they went, we're going
Speaker 1: on a bus to Amsterdam. Do you want to come
Speaker 1: to it? Sure? I just got in the bus and
Speaker 1: I went with them and talked all night in the bus.
Speaker 1: Stay for the Amsterdam show. Then I think I went
Speaker 1: to the Berlin show. After that, I just kind of
Speaker 1: went the same same clothes for about three or four days. Um,
Speaker 1: And that's how that one came in and they like
Speaker 1: the idea of working with me over all these other
Speaker 1: managers who are way way more successful because I work
Speaker 1: with Pure. And they liked the way her business was running,
Speaker 1: the way her career was handled, how she was completely
Speaker 1: in control of her career, the way they wanted to be.
Speaker 1: You know the fact that she worked with Independence and
Speaker 1: Majors and it was all mixed um and that's what
Speaker 1: appealed to them. So how did it end with buerk
Speaker 1: in Arcade, fireing You and ended with Buyork two ten
Speaker 1: and Living? I think because she was making her album Biophilia,
Speaker 1: and it was the first project of hers that I
Speaker 1: had worked on that I didn't understand. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is and instead of for one of
Speaker 1: a better terms, the salesman, you give the product, I
Speaker 1: could sell it to everybody, all your partners, labels, anyone else, promoters?
Speaker 1: How are we going to do this? And I didn't
Speaker 1: get it. I was trying to picture myself in her room.
Speaker 1: And if I didn't understand that, how is everyone else
Speaker 1: gonna understand it? Because that was an album where she
Speaker 1: custom build instruments. It was very scientific if you look
Speaker 1: at it on paper is sheer genius, absolutely brilliant. The
Speaker 1: show was incredible, but I didn't understand it, and that
Speaker 1: you know, we're still friends to this day. I just said,
Speaker 1: I'm not the person and with who can realize your
Speaker 1: project the way you want to realize. You've kind of
Speaker 1: crossed the boundary between just doing sound based music into art.
Speaker 1: And at that time her partner was Matthew Barney, who
Speaker 1: was a brilliant artist, unbelievably amazing, had a career retrospective
Speaker 1: at that time at the Guggenheim. All was the Guggenheim
Speaker 1: brilliant artist for someone that I think he was the
Speaker 1: youngest artist at that time who had the Guggenheim retrospective,
Speaker 1: So there was clearly a big artistic ah I felt
Speaker 1: like an underlying competition in their personal lives. Who is
Speaker 1: the most extreme you can who can be the most
Speaker 1: artistic and most brilliant and most ambitious. And at that point,
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is you know, I'm the wrong person
Speaker 1: to work this. It wasn't about finances and money or anything.
Speaker 1: It's just like, I don't know how to do this.
Speaker 1: And she never replaced me. She just built a team
Speaker 1: people who could help facilitate and work and it's worked
Speaker 1: really well. She never wanted to be famous, but she
Speaker 1: said I tried the pop start, think it was great fun.
Speaker 1: Not gonna be a pop star anymore, you know. And
Speaker 1: she's classically trained, so her music is very, very complicated
Speaker 1: and very ambitious and that's not my skill set. I
Speaker 1: wish it was, but it's not an arcade fire. With
Speaker 1: arcade Fire on the last album campaign, you have Winn Butler,
Speaker 1: who is unbelievably brilliant as a songwriter, so ambitious. In
Speaker 1: my twelve years with them and five albums, never had
Speaker 1: a hit single, sold really well, live, unbelievable. You know.
Speaker 1: It got to a point in the UK, specifically the UK,
Speaker 1: who really welcomed them with open arms. Headlining Glass and
Speaker 1: Breed d eighty thousand people within a week, Hyde Park,
Speaker 1: sixty five people had any with Mom for the Son's
Speaker 1: opening up UM and three nights at Earl's Court two
Speaker 1: people a night. It was huge. Everything soldau instantly. There's
Speaker 1: nothing they could do wrong, and when felt a failure
Speaker 1: because they didn't get to stadium level because he would
Speaker 1: look at Cold Clay and bands like that, how come
Speaker 1: they're doing stadiums and we're not doing stadiums. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: they're big hit singles, anthems, um, and they do a
Speaker 1: lot of things that you don't do. They're driven in
Speaker 1: a different way. They work it. They do a lot
Speaker 1: of promo, they're playing the game, they're writing pop songs.
Speaker 1: And it's like he didn't get it. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: why are we not playing Yankee Stadium and Dodger Stadium
Speaker 1: on this album campaign? You sort of know in the
Speaker 1: air when you can do that, And if they'd had
Speaker 1: a hit single, they could probably have done that. They
Speaker 1: just didn't get there, you know, even you know, like
Speaker 1: the last two wasn't successful. They did it in a round.
Speaker 1: It was really big expensive doing shows in them around
Speaker 1: is complicated in arenas. I didn't I didn't think they
Speaker 1: should have done it that way. They knew that. The
Speaker 1: tour before it was like two nights in Massacre Garden,
Speaker 1: three nights in Barclays to three nights in the Forum,
Speaker 1: two weekends headline and Coachella, like everything was going great,
Speaker 1: and we looked at doing stadiums at that point, and
Speaker 1: then that's when it became a numbers game because they
Speaker 1: wanted didn't want to charge over a hundred dollars the
Speaker 1: ticket and doll the ticket you're trying to do a
Speaker 1: stadium on that you walk up no money because the
Speaker 1: overhead to do the show is so high, cover the grass,
Speaker 1: you know, everything of the infrastructure you've gotta bring in,
Speaker 1: you know, and stadiums really only work when you have
Speaker 1: a lot of shows and stadiums and you can you know,
Speaker 1: aggregate your your production build and try and share stadium
Speaker 1: with someone else. Maybe there's two different artists can do
Speaker 1: the same stadium on the weekend, but uses the same
Speaker 1: structures and same grass covering. You split the cost um.
Speaker 1: So they felt that it's really when all the rest
Speaker 1: of the band thinking felt that I wasn't getting into
Speaker 1: where he wanted to go. We're still friends. We hang
Speaker 1: out with drinks. A couple of weeks ago. You know,
Speaker 1: I spent I spent a lot of time in New
Speaker 1: Orleans because of them. They moved here and I still
Speaker 1: have a place here, see them in the same bars, restaurants.
Speaker 1: We're talking to He's like, how do you put music
Speaker 1: out today? He's going, I've never proved so many formats ever,
Speaker 1: so they're about to at some point pop music out
Speaker 1: and we're talking about it and it's healthy, it's good.
Speaker 1: So I like the fact that I don't work with them.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't know what to do with them right now.
Speaker 1: That's the thing because if you look at that genre,
Speaker 1: the Strokes, Kings and Leon our Cape for Vampire Weekend,
Speaker 1: you know, Jack White and are what are White Stripes
Speaker 1: at the time when there were all those bands from
Speaker 1: that period, that early in the two thousand's, Where is
Speaker 1: their audience right now? Where is their radio audience? We're
Speaker 1: talking about radio early in the conversation, interns of radio
Speaker 1: is pretty much gone. It doesn't resonate, So what is
Speaker 1: there out there? They don't scream, None of them have
Speaker 1: streaming followers enough to get them over the over the
Speaker 1: hump of streaming. It's a physical audience. It's doing nice,
Speaker 1: cool packages for that audience. But then my big question
Speaker 1: that I try and answer for myself. If you are
Speaker 1: like a Stroke, Sa Kings, Leon, r K par or whoever,
Speaker 1: who've done at least five albums and your show is great,
Speaker 1: you have a loyal fan base, why do you really
Speaker 1: need a sixth album? Or will you go and see
Speaker 1: them for the fifth or sixth time when there's maybe
Speaker 1: other new things that you want to go if you're
Speaker 1: on a limited budget. So I'm trying to think and
Speaker 1: that how would I have done? How would I do this?
Speaker 1: How would I present this to the world is challenging. Well,
Speaker 1: the interesting thing is since they've left you, uh, they've
Speaker 1: had no further success greater than what they had previously.
Speaker 1: It's gone in the other direction, and that's what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. I delivered number one, number one, The biggest
Speaker 1: radio hit was on the last album. Their touring was
Speaker 1: globally successful. They're deal making structure second to none. They're
Speaker 1: in a great place. They also have great stock and Spotify.
Speaker 1: That's we'll see them financially right forever. And we negotiated
Speaker 1: ten years ago before was public, So they had so
Speaker 1: many great deals and in such an amazing position, and
Speaker 1: I'm really really happy about that. I don't think the
Speaker 1: next album is going to be number one. It's not
Speaker 1: going to be number one because of what you need
Speaker 1: to do together. Did they do they have a manager presently? Yes? Yes,
Speaker 1: is he Vikovich who used to work with Kanye. Great guy,
Speaker 1: really really good guy, which I'm happy about as well.
Speaker 1: How did you get Paul McCartney. He co called me.
Speaker 1: Why it's a really fun story, but this is the
Speaker 1: Stars in Line. I'm sitting in my off as them
Speaker 1: in London. I've worked with r K bar Bjork and
Speaker 1: a couple of smaller acts and my phone goes it's
Speaker 1: a private number. I just answered it when he's that Scott, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Paul McCarty and I stood up attentions he
Speaker 1: had walked in the room because you knew it was
Speaker 1: his voice, and I'm like, why am I standing up?
Speaker 1: And I'm in my room on my own. He sat
Speaker 1: back down again. I'd never spoken to Paul, didn't know
Speaker 1: anyone on his team, and he said, yeah, here your
Speaker 1: manager said yeah, I don't really like managers, went me,
Speaker 1: neither other than the couple, and he's gone, I'm working
Speaker 1: on an album and I need some help. You want
Speaker 1: to him in the office and we'll have a chat
Speaker 1: about see if we can do something together. You know,
Speaker 1: I'd love to get your thoughts and a few things.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah you might, great, I have my assistant
Speaker 1: call you will set up. That was a call really
Speaker 1: short and I'm like, WHOA, that was weird? Where did
Speaker 1: that come from? And then he assistant calls, choose day,
Speaker 1: tentacle yet perfect. We stop and meeting in his office.
Speaker 1: And but ten minutes after that, his lawyer calls because
Speaker 1: he went he went rogue. He didn't check with anyone,
Speaker 1: so Afric called me opens he called his lawyer, and
Speaker 1: lawyer called me said, okay, that's the way the deal works.
Speaker 1: NBA is coming over. Give me your email address. You
Speaker 1: know all that stuff started. I'm like, okay, clearly he
Speaker 1: just went rogan and tell a single person he was
Speaker 1: doing the call. The next day, I got a call
Speaker 1: from a really good friend of mine, Jefferson Hack now
Speaker 1: Jefferson as a journalist. Him and his partner of the
Speaker 1: photographer rank and the business partner that is, they started
Speaker 1: a magazine, Dazed and Confused in the UK that was
Speaker 1: kind of a lifestyle fashion music magazine. Since went on
Speaker 1: rankings like Superstar. Photographer Jefferson started a few of the
Speaker 1: magazines they still continues. He's Etra. I think he's the
Speaker 1: publisher another magazine, another man magazine. You know Sally he's
Speaker 1: a big and fashion and works with all the fashion
Speaker 1: houses and things. You know, just someone who was really
Speaker 1: in touch with the here and now music fashion culture,
Speaker 1: and obviously he was friends with Stella McCartney. I wasn't
Speaker 1: friends with I am now, but I wasn't then. So
Speaker 1: Jefferson Cortey, Hey, Stella McCartney called me instead. I need
Speaker 1: someone new and interesting to work with my dad. Do
Speaker 1: you know anyone? He went, I don't know anyone in
Speaker 1: music except for me, you know, because he was big
Speaker 1: friends with The York and we knew each other and
Speaker 1: I knew each other since the magazine started. And so
Speaker 1: I hope you don't mind that. Gave her your number.
Speaker 1: So Paul my call and I went, funny, you say
Speaker 1: that he's already called, and he went, damn, sorry, I
Speaker 1: should have told you earlier. Um. So this is the thing,
Speaker 1: just Stella trying to like, which she still does to
Speaker 1: this day, how to breathe in life into him? How
Speaker 1: do you know? She's like a mini me of Paul
Speaker 1: in a female form. You know, she's so dripped and
Speaker 1: she's like, how do I just get my dad to
Speaker 1: do things are exciting and interesting, you know. And that's
Speaker 1: where the number came from. So it was this little chain.
Speaker 1: They didn't do the beauty parade, he didn't go and
Speaker 1: meet ten other people. I went and had a meeting.
Speaker 1: They went, well, let's get a few months and see
Speaker 1: how it goes. In the first few meetings were really
Speaker 1: hilariously funny looking back on them. You know, I'll never
Speaker 1: be the first time you like, he said, Okay, and
Speaker 1: pull the team together, up the system, somethin the label
Speaker 1: going to meet over at my house. We're going over
Speaker 1: to his house in London. We're sitting down and wait, okay,
Speaker 1: the albums are in eight weeks. What are we going
Speaker 1: to be doing? And I went, well, first thing, Paul,
Speaker 1: can we put it back four weeks so we've got
Speaker 1: a bit more time? He went, Listen, when I was
Speaker 1: in the Beatles, we finished the Friday record would be out,
Speaker 1: but in three or four days, probably on the Monday
Speaker 1: of the Tuesday. Now records coming out. It's fine, It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: that was like one of the first meetings. Um, but
Speaker 1: that I thought it'd be in there doing some consulting
Speaker 1: for him and helping out just on that album project
Speaker 1: and a few of the things he had going on.
Speaker 1: He did Complation DVD at the time of my can't
Speaker 1: he years and we're pulling all this together now, just stop?
Speaker 1: That would sort of be it. He got away for
Speaker 1: a few years, but then we really got into it
Speaker 1: and we started getting creative because he one thing he said,
Speaker 1: and the first meeting was he said, I hate getting bored.
Speaker 1: I hate it. I still always want to be fair,
Speaker 1: ideas and stimulating. All these things resonated to the point
Speaker 1: where I started looking back, Oh, he hasn't want a
Speaker 1: Grammy in twenty years, and why is that? You know?
Speaker 1: And well I started doing all these things and then
Speaker 1: we since one about fifteen grammy since I've worked with him,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like we just changed the course
Speaker 1: and the energy behind what he was doing, you know,
Speaker 1: and again making sure that the PR was on point.
Speaker 1: And I learned that with him, how we do things
Speaker 1: that are great and interesting. I think the first piece
Speaker 1: of PR I made him do when I work with
Speaker 1: him was a Pitchfork interview when Pitchfork was very different,
Speaker 1: still run by Ryan back then, you know, and this
Speaker 1: is two thousands seven six, and you know, and I thought,
Speaker 1: this is why we should do it. You would never
Speaker 1: talk to them and they would never think of talking
Speaker 1: to you. And remember, Colin Ryanson, what do you think
Speaker 1: about this? He went, we really get to talk to him. Me,
Speaker 1: you really get to talk to him? Oh, hell yeah,
Speaker 1: we're in and that just and that just traveled and
Speaker 1: he loved that interview and he still refers to that
Speaker 1: interview today. So it's just thinking, how do we do
Speaker 1: things he hasn't before? That was like me, but I'm
Speaker 1: probably gonna get fired after this one. He's never done
Speaker 1: an in store, you know, so let's do the in store.
Speaker 1: And then we got Grammy nominated from the twelve inch final,
Speaker 1: were released from it and things like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a didn't win the Grammy, but at least we've
Speaker 1: got nominated. So we did a bunch of fun things.
Speaker 1: You know, he's one of the biggest also on the planet.
Speaker 1: How do we go to do things that's on the ground,
Speaker 1: pool it right back down and then rebuild it back up.
Speaker 1: That was really really good fun. And he was always
Speaker 1: open to ideas, always open, never shot him down, didn't
Speaker 1: say yes all the time, but it was all be
Speaker 1: great idea, not for me or not for right now,
Speaker 1: but great idea. And it was really healthy dialogue. So
Speaker 1: again I'm done year sixty, so happy, heavenly fired yet, Wow,
Speaker 1: this has been fantastic. Scott I wanted to thank you
Speaker 1: for all the time you've taken for those who were
Speaker 1: in the trenches of the business and for those on
Speaker 1: the outside. This is really quite a primer of what's
Speaker 1: going on. Certainly demonstrates how you have your feet both
Speaker 1: on the ground and in the cyber world. So thanks
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time, Scott, Thank you, Bob,
Speaker 1: thanks for inviting me. You good to chat, been long overdue,
Speaker 1: and hopefully see each other in person at some point. Okay,
Speaker 1: just one question. You had this insane accident where you
Speaker 1: were hit. How are you doing. How's your body doing? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get hit faced on by car. I'm doing it
Speaker 1: other than my knees at one surgery. Didn't do the
Speaker 1: second surgery because I didn't like the feeling of the
Speaker 1: first surgery. Doesn't feel that great. So but I'm good.
Speaker 1: Train every day except on place. And just one more question,
Speaker 1: to what degree has your attention to business affected your
Speaker 1: personal life, relationships, etcetera. I think and do what we do,
Speaker 1: it's always going to affect him because and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to get that balance right between you know, pre COVID.
Speaker 1: I think I did a hundred thirty five flights back
Speaker 1: cut down to about forty last year, who's back up
Speaker 1: about eighty, you know, And I'm trying not to get
Speaker 1: it to a point where I'm on a plane every
Speaker 1: other day. You know, I love what I do. I
Speaker 1: love the people that I work with. I love my team.
Speaker 1: The artists are phenomenal. I couldn't ask to work with
Speaker 1: better artists. So I'm really really lucky with regards of that.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to let all the people in my
Speaker 1: team who have been with me so long, who are
Speaker 1: so great, they can do a lot more of the traveling.
Speaker 1: They can do a lot more FaceTime. I know exact
Speaker 1: place when I have to be somewhere and then I'm there.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to find that balance where I actually
Speaker 1: don't have to be in a plane. I say this,
Speaker 1: but you know, you know, we could multiple shows, some
Speaker 1: in the same city in the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: and I'm in Atlanta and in Vegas and in l
Speaker 1: a butin three days. So you know, what I'm saying
Speaker 1: isn't really living up to what I'm trying to do.
Speaker 1: But I'm trying to slow down the pace and balance
Speaker 1: that sort of quality of life with quality of work
Speaker 1: and then since you mentioned shows in COVID, I mean Elton.
Speaker 1: Elton restarted his uh final tour, he immediately got COVID. Okay,
Speaker 1: the laws, certainly in America are different depending on what
Speaker 1: state you're in. There's been some super spreader events. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you decide to go on the road, what
Speaker 1: precautions do you take? What do you think what's gonna
Speaker 1: happen here in the next six months? Every every artist
Speaker 1: has different levels of there, that's how you put it.
Speaker 1: How strict they're going to be with the policy if
Speaker 1: you you know, there's something went round online with the
Speaker 1: deadening companies COVID policy, which was the strictest that I
Speaker 1: think we've seen. Finding balance what we've done on all
Speaker 1: shows from from October and I've been having a lot
Speaker 1: of big shows arena show since October last year, still running.
Speaker 1: We have a COVID protocol so on every tour, everybody
Speaker 1: going backstage has to be tested before we get in
Speaker 1: the room. That includes building staff. All building staff have
Speaker 1: to be vaccinated. Everybody in the touring on trash has
Speaker 1: to be vaccinated because of good a singer or you've
Speaker 1: got four guys in a band or whatever, happens to be.
Speaker 1: They go down, there's no show, so you have to
Speaker 1: keep them protected as best you can. Everyone has to
Speaker 1: wear masks backstage, but ensuring that you keep this backstage bubble.
Speaker 1: The only time the bubble breaks, it's down to the artice. Oh,
Speaker 1: my sisters coming in, my brother's coming in on my whatever,
Speaker 1: my auntie, my cousin, my Nick donaghbor's best friend, and
Speaker 1: people start coming backstage. They we want them all tested,
Speaker 1: We want them all vaccinated tested, you know, or to
Speaker 1: make sure that you're still trying to keep some kind
Speaker 1: of safety level, because that's the only way that the
Speaker 1: artist is kind to go down. Um. We had a
Speaker 1: big issue is the chelly through two nights of the
Speaker 1: Garden in December. You know, like then we had a
Speaker 1: few shows in Florida, like Miami and a couple of
Speaker 1: other shows. Time we got to the Garden, two guys
Speaker 1: in the video team, they were on a bus. Two
Speaker 1: of them went down. Managed to replace one of them,
Speaker 1: but not too often. Then the audio team started to
Speaker 1: go down to the other shows. We were on a
Speaker 1: skeleton staff from the very last show about the December.
Speaker 1: You know, it's because we couldn't hire people people didn't
Speaker 1: want to come up, catch COVID and be out for
Speaker 1: ten days for Christmas. So people we couldn't reheart staff.
Speaker 1: They went bell ill. They didn't want to be in
Speaker 1: a bus sleeping on a bus. Of other guys might
Speaker 1: have it because they've been exposed to the guy who
Speaker 1: did get it. That became really complicated, and that's how
Speaker 1: shows are going down. So I can see say, I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened with the Dell show in Vegas,
Speaker 1: no idea. I know as much as you know, and
Speaker 1: the next guy knows just from what you read. Well,
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of it's not public. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. But what I feel is like genuinely you know,
Speaker 1: like if you aren't strict about it, as soon as
Speaker 1: someone in your audio team goes down and someone else
Speaker 1: goes down, there might be someone by No, that was
Speaker 1: all horseship. There was only one. There was only one person.
Speaker 1: It was an excuse. I mean, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: your concept. But in the case of Adele, the concept
Speaker 1: is really the case of a Yeah, the case of
Speaker 1: a Dell, it was an excuse. But keep going. No,
Speaker 1: but that it's easy. Soon as some departments start to
Speaker 1: go down because those big shows is have the whole
Speaker 1: video team, they've got a whole electronics team, or you know,
Speaker 1: things that move on the stage. They got your projection team,
Speaker 1: you've got your lighting team, your audio team. Is a
Speaker 1: lot of staff there. As soon as they start to drop.
Speaker 1: If the key man goes the designer, director, the main
Speaker 1: sound engineer, who's the best guy in the world, he
Speaker 1: goes down, you can replace them, you know, you find
Speaker 1: someone else to go in. That's when shows can get
Speaker 1: in trouble when it's nothing to do with the autist.
Speaker 1: So these staff members, this is where it becomes complicated.
Speaker 1: Do you force everyone to stay in their hotels and
Speaker 1: not go out when you're a day off. They have
Speaker 1: to live in their hotel room to stay isolated, because
Speaker 1: if they've got the hotel bar, but hanging up with
Speaker 1: another guy. The two lighting guys are going for dinner
Speaker 1: somewhere because a great sushi restaurant. Oh but they caught
Speaker 1: it because they've been out and went for a drink
Speaker 1: at the bar before. Then that's the point. Do you
Speaker 1: not allow anyone to leave? They don't have to stay
Speaker 1: in their rooms to keep it pure. It's really tough
Speaker 1: and to what degree our acts hesitant to go out
Speaker 1: and work. I think the older officer perhaps hesitant to
Speaker 1: go out. And you see Aerosmith just canceled it. To
Speaker 1: think this week or wait last week? UM, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I see a lot more shows being canceled. We're
Speaker 1: scheduling a bunch of things in Europe. They're definitely getting
Speaker 1: hit hard over there, harder than it feels in the US.
Speaker 1: But this late recent wave in the past couple of months,
Speaker 1: the kron uh you know, strain definitely was so yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably the thing the worst we've seen, because it's
Speaker 1: so infectious um in comparison to previous strengths. UM. And
Speaker 1: my hope is it's hopefully starting to die off and
Speaker 1: go down, just the numbers of stating that, But then
Speaker 1: I'm sure not too far behind. It will be another string.
Speaker 1: How we keep navigating this? And how about yourself? Have
Speaker 1: you gotten COVID? You know what I did? I caught
Speaker 1: it second of ganguery. I've been all over covering a
Speaker 1: bunch of shows. I was in London, it was in
Speaker 1: New York, it was in d C. We did a
Speaker 1: show at the White House with Pcelli in l A
Speaker 1: I was on a plane. It felt like every other
Speaker 1: day in December. Got home. It's fine, fine for New Year,
Speaker 1: had lunch of friends the New Year's Day, walk up
Speaker 1: in the second in January through a little you know
Speaker 1: particularly but it's just just the cold, because we could
Speaker 1: forget that you can still get a cold. Just got
Speaker 1: tested and it was positive. Fortunately, you know, double jab
Speaker 1: with a booster. It was lighter than a head cold.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little you know, block sign us. Um,
Speaker 1: it was co feeing a little bit, it was it
Speaker 1: was It's fine. I was working as a normal you know,
Speaker 1: just stay at home that first week in the year.
Speaker 1: So I feel like I'm glad I got out of
Speaker 1: the way. And if that is as bad as it
Speaker 1: will be for someone like me, then I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1: You know. Um yeah, still said that. I caught it.
Speaker 1: I felt like you see all these memes going to
Speaker 1: run with someone with beer and someone's like dodging, dodging, dodging.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was like, great, I've gone around
Speaker 1: the world, have been so many flights, I've skipped this thing.
Speaker 1: I've been everywhere, and then I felt like, where did
Speaker 1: I get that didn't go at any New Year's Eve
Speaker 1: events or parties around anything that was really good. Super quiet,
Speaker 1: mell time still caught. Wow, we can talk for days.
Speaker 1: We're gonna leave it here. We can, we can, we can. Okay,
Speaker 1: It's always great to talk to your Scott YouTube lo
Speaker 1: YouTube Till next time. This is Bob left Sex