Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob left Sech Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is music in Legend Miles Copeland, you know,
Speaker 1: was a manager, as a label owner, the consummate Outsidered insider. Miles,
Speaker 1: glad to have you here. Nice to be with you,
Speaker 1: Bob asth we nitor you want. Okay, what's the story?
Speaker 1: Was your father really in the CIA? My father was, well,
Speaker 1: some people like to say, you know, for because it
Speaker 1: sounds exotic perhaps to say he was a spy, but
Speaker 1: an actual fact, he was what we would call an
Speaker 1: operative in all the countries where he was working, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it be Dabascus, Syria, or Lebanon or Egypt. The
Speaker 1: heads of the country he knew that he was operating
Speaker 1: from the CIA, which was really what they wanted because
Speaker 1: they wanted a c I a guy that they could
Speaker 1: talk to. So and an actual fact, yes, he was CIA,
Speaker 1: but he was an operative, you know, So I can't
Speaker 1: really say that he was a spy, although it does
Speaker 1: sound rather exotic to say that he was. And when
Speaker 1: did you discover that this was his line of work? Well,
Speaker 1: I was probably I mean when when we were in Egypt,
Speaker 1: I was only ten years old and he after we
Speaker 1: left Egypt, he resigned from the CIA, and I knew
Speaker 1: a few years after that that he was CIA, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really think much about it. Um and I
Speaker 1: never had any feeling that there was something wrong with
Speaker 1: with influencing governments, let's say, because Lord knows some governments
Speaker 1: do need influencing. Well, there's a rumor that your father
Speaker 1: was involved in overthrowing the government in Syria. Was that true? Well,
Speaker 1: that actually was true, but it was not something that
Speaker 1: Uh had been planned in advance. I mean, as my
Speaker 1: father used to tell the story, he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I was having dinner with the General Zaim and the
Speaker 1: Colonel Uh from the military attache American American Embassy, and
Speaker 1: we were talking and he kind of brought up, you know,
Speaker 1: almost like philosophically, well what would it take to overthrow
Speaker 1: a government? And I sort of thought about it, and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, you know, I guess you'd want to
Speaker 1: take the radio station, and then you'd want to uh.
Speaker 1: Well no, wait a minute, I think first you need
Speaker 1: a reason for overthrowing the government, but then you take
Speaker 1: the So anyway, they were talking philosophically, so they didn't
Speaker 1: think much about it. But apparently the general had stopped
Speaker 1: drinking and said finally says he could do this. We
Speaker 1: could do this. The Americans help me, we can do this.
Speaker 1: And he thought they all, you know, he in the
Speaker 1: military had a she thought, my god, the guy's the
Speaker 1: guy serious here? You know. Well, you know what, let
Speaker 1: him sleep it off. He'll forget about it the next day. Well,
Speaker 1: the next day he didn't forget about it, and uh,
Speaker 1: he was Okay, the American is gonna help me, all right,
Speaker 1: you know. And so he sends a telegram to the
Speaker 1: CEI office back in Washington and saying, you know what
Speaker 1: do we do? This guy really wants to overthrow the government?
Speaker 1: You know, what's our position? And gets a cable back saying,
Speaker 1: you know, don't mess it. You know, we don't need
Speaker 1: this stuff, and uh, we don't mess around in foreign affairs.
Speaker 1: And he tells the general and the general says, but
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this. You must help me. Cable
Speaker 1: goes back and forth and back and forth, and finally
Speaker 1: the general says, look, if you don't help me, I
Speaker 1: go too the Russians. So Cable goes back to Washington. Look,
Speaker 1: this guy is serious. He's gonna do this either we're
Speaker 1: with him or we're not with him, and if we
Speaker 1: don't go with him, he's gonna go with the Russians.
Speaker 1: So what do we want to do. Cable comes back saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, you're on the spot. Do what you gotta do.
Speaker 1: So he stayed an incident which was at our house,
Speaker 1: you know. He one night, Uh, my father says, okay,
Speaker 1: you and your mother and the two kids. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna leave the house and you're gonna go
Speaker 1: away for the weekend, you know what, but we want
Speaker 1: to go, just go, you know. So how we went
Speaker 1: and uh, we come back a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: and the house is full of bullet holes, and the
Speaker 1: allegation had a bomb in the garden, you know, which
Speaker 1: would planted to make sure nobody would be hurt, of course,
Speaker 1: but this was the incident to create the the atmosphere
Speaker 1: that the government had to come in, and you know,
Speaker 1: this general had to come in and save the country
Speaker 1: from these rebels, you know, which were of course completely
Speaker 1: made up. So he ended and of course the general
Speaker 1: overtook the country, and of course my father then could
Speaker 1: claim as to being the first American operative to overthrow
Speaker 1: our government. By covert means. But it was not a
Speaker 1: planned thing where the CIA and back in Washington was plotting,
Speaker 1: you know, they just got stuck and decided to better
Speaker 1: go on with it because the guy was going to
Speaker 1: do it anyway. So how many countries did you live
Speaker 1: in growing up? I lived in Syria during that period,
Speaker 1: and then uh in Egypt when Gamala Donasa became the
Speaker 1: president and my father was organized but was actually loaned
Speaker 1: to NASA from the CIA to organize egypt Secret and
Speaker 1: Teller's organization. And then we my father decided to go
Speaker 1: on his own with some other CIA guys and they
Speaker 1: would for their own private ci A and go and
Speaker 1: we moved to Lebanon. So I lived in Lebanon for
Speaker 1: twelve years. So I spent probably half of my early
Speaker 1: childhood and somewhere around the Middle East. And to what
Speaker 1: degree did these experiences inform your career as a manager.
Speaker 1: What I'm really talking about is you're the first manager
Speaker 1: I know who took their band, in this case, the
Speaker 1: police around the world. How did you decide to do that? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I could say with some sort
Speaker 1: of definite um news or position to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: because I grew up in Egypt. That's why I wanted
Speaker 1: a couple Asia. But I knew Egypt existed, you know,
Speaker 1: I knew the rest of the world existed. And if
Speaker 1: there was one thing I knew about, you know, marketing
Speaker 1: and rock and roll and whatever, is that image counts
Speaker 1: for a lot. And you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: the Beatles, it's long hair, or it's you know, Elton
Speaker 1: John Wild clothes or you know, you you go down
Speaker 1: the list of the real big superstars, there was always
Speaker 1: something that was grabbed your attention. It could be a
Speaker 1: photograph or a uh something about them, you know. And
Speaker 1: I was figured, well, you know, the police. When I
Speaker 1: was managing the police, I had two great advantages. One
Speaker 1: was there's only three guys, which means it was very
Speaker 1: inexpensive to move them around. And not only was it,
Speaker 1: uh three guys, but it was at a period where
Speaker 1: having a lot of equipment was really not something that
Speaker 1: you needed, you know, it was actually better if you
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of equipment. So it was a
Speaker 1: cheap operation. We could go to place as nobody else went.
Speaker 1: You know. The other great advantage of the police was
Speaker 1: they looked good, you know, and the sting looked like,
Speaker 1: you know, you dressed them up as an Arab, but
Speaker 1: put him on a stallion. There's Lawrence a Rabia for you,
Speaker 1: you know. So I figured, well, if we're gonna go
Speaker 1: for mystique and for glamour and for photographs, you know,
Speaker 1: and we're just a few of us, why not why
Speaker 1: not go to Egypt and why not go to eat
Speaker 1: India and some exotic places, because you know, you take
Speaker 1: a picture of the police riding camels with the Pyramids
Speaker 1: in the background, that's a photograph that any music journalist
Speaker 1: who's busy trying to put his newspaper together for that
Speaker 1: week is gonna think, well, that's a photo I could use.
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the market it was. It was,
Speaker 1: in a way, it was a marketing idea, you know,
Speaker 1: but it was also a lot of fun, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of you know, when we went to India,
Speaker 1: we dressed up. I dressed them up as Maraja maharajahs
Speaker 1: at the Tajbaal Hotel and but it was definitely something
Speaker 1: that made them look glamorous and a lot of people
Speaker 1: around the world be thinking, my god, what a wonderful
Speaker 1: you know, what a hip happening. Group. They must be.
Speaker 1: Look look where they are. They're they're playing in India,
Speaker 1: They're playing in all these wild, exotic places, and it
Speaker 1: made them so different than everybody else. You know, anybody
Speaker 1: could play Boston or New York or London or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, but Egypt that was different. Talking about marketing,
Speaker 1: was your idea for the members that being to all
Speaker 1: die there here blonde? I will admit that was not
Speaker 1: my idea. However, when I saw it, I thought, Eureka,
Speaker 1: look that's a look that kind of glued them together
Speaker 1: as a as a group, just like the Beatles, all
Speaker 1: wearing long hair or whatever. You know. It was. It
Speaker 1: was like a glue. But they had done it actually
Speaker 1: for a regular experiment gun commercial, and the and the
Speaker 1: people that wanted the commercial this that we want a
Speaker 1: group and we want them all to be blonde hair,
Speaker 1: you know, and so they dyed their hair for the commercial,
Speaker 1: you know, to make a bit of a bit of
Speaker 1: extra money. But when I saw it, I recognized what
Speaker 1: the value of that was. Okay, Now, these places you
Speaker 1: took the band were places where they hadn't had rock
Speaker 1: conscience before. And I would assume there were some bumps
Speaker 1: in the road especially in India. What was your experience
Speaker 1: like playing in India. Well, India was was something where
Speaker 1: you know, you sort of imagined what things are gonna be,
Speaker 1: but you get to the place and you find out
Speaker 1: that things aren't quite what you imagine. You know, you
Speaker 1: imagine India that big country with at least have a
Speaker 1: p A system. Well, when I got to India, it
Speaker 1: took me a while to find somebody who would promote
Speaker 1: a show. But the first thing I found out, of course,
Speaker 1: there was no PA system. The only one that existed
Speaker 1: was for twenty people or so. So I effectively had
Speaker 1: to figure away to get a p A system into India,
Speaker 1: which meant hiring some very good carpenters who could build
Speaker 1: the big speaker cabinets, but they had no speakers in India.
Speaker 1: So I had to go to London to buy speakers
Speaker 1: and fly to back to India with speakers to give
Speaker 1: it to these these uh carpenters to stick in the cabinets.
Speaker 1: So we actually built our own p A system for India.
Speaker 1: The other thing about India that was was unique was
Speaker 1: that we had we turned out we had there had
Speaker 1: never been a rock concert of any size in India before,
Speaker 1: and we hired a three thousand seat venue open air,
Speaker 1: and uh, the group, you know, we we went out
Speaker 1: to do a sound check because every band would you know,
Speaker 1: three or four o'clock in the afternoon, you do your
Speaker 1: sound check to make sure everything's working for the show
Speaker 1: that night, which was gonna be at seven or eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: you know, start. But of course the audience had never
Speaker 1: heard a rock concert before and they were beginning to
Speaker 1: uh come to the concert hall early in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: So when the band started the sound check, the audience
Speaker 1: thought the concert had started and they were missing it.
Speaker 1: So they all freaked out, and we're climbing the walls
Speaker 1: and finally broke the gates down and stormed the venue,
Speaker 1: and before we knew it, the place filled up with
Speaker 1: all these fans thinking the show it started. Meanwhile there
Speaker 1: was the police just basically sound checking. Okay, And since
Speaker 1: you've lived in Egypt, was its smooth sailing there? Well?
Speaker 1: Egypt had several problems for it. First place was I
Speaker 1: went to Egypt beforehand, knowing that you really need to
Speaker 1: check things out in advance, so of course I went.
Speaker 1: It was at the American University, which I figured was
Speaker 1: a decent hall, which it was, and great, do you
Speaker 1: have electricity? Does it work? Yeah? Okay, electricity works. Do
Speaker 1: you have uh spotlights? Yeah, okay, there are the spotlights. Okay,
Speaker 1: you've got spotlights. And so I I vetted the place
Speaker 1: and I thought, well, okay, we're pretty together. So we were.
Speaker 1: The first show was in India. Then we came into Egypt. Well,
Speaker 1: I I had made a mistake or somehow the wires
Speaker 1: got crossed. And the first thing that happened was the
Speaker 1: equipment came in on air frase as opposed to access
Speaker 1: baggage and uh, so I go to pick up the
Speaker 1: the equipment so we can do the show that night,
Speaker 1: and of course there's no equipment there because it came
Speaker 1: in on the freight a supposed to excess baggage. And
Speaker 1: I had a little fixed man by the name of Muhammed,
Speaker 1: and I said, Mohammed, Uh, what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: with the equipment is not here? They said, well maybe
Speaker 1: it is. It a freight. So we go to the
Speaker 1: air freight blights, which of course was a Friday, and
Speaker 1: uh it was their their holiday there, religious holiday like
Speaker 1: like our Sunday. And there was a guy there and says,
Speaker 1: sunny gonna impuzzy, but we cannot help you come back Monday,
Speaker 1: you know. I said, we can't Monday. The show is tonight,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh so Muhammed, what were gonna do?
Speaker 1: He society Sunday, I cannot tell this was embuzzyment Monday.
Speaker 1: Cannot cannot help unless you know someone the someone in
Speaker 1: the government, you know. And I said, well, I do
Speaker 1: remember a guy I my father told me about and
Speaker 1: who's the they are neighbor when we lived in Egypt.
Speaker 1: I heard that he was a big deal in the
Speaker 1: British the government, so I do know him. He said,
Speaker 1: what's his name? I said, huss Hussan behind me. You
Speaker 1: know this man, he is the vice but let us
Speaker 1: thought of Egypt. He could do anything. He is a god.
Speaker 1: I said, well, get him on the phone. Lo and
Speaker 1: behold he does. Get him on the phone, and I
Speaker 1: get this vice prime minister on the phone and he's
Speaker 1: going and this is the gold letter. How are you?
Speaker 1: How's your family, your bub, how's your father? Is all good? Everything?
Speaker 1: You know? I said, yeah, it's all good. But I've
Speaker 1: got a problem here. I can't get my equipment. It's
Speaker 1: in it's in it's in freight and there's nobody working here,
Speaker 1: and he says, don't I said someone immediately, no more
Speaker 1: than ten minutes went by, sirens wailing. Twenty policeman show up.
Speaker 1: They waived the equipment through and I'm a hero. You
Speaker 1: go out and I looked at Stay and I said, sting,
Speaker 1: that's management for you. Then that night, that night though,
Speaker 1: of course, then I showed you just how stupid manager
Speaker 1: early was. Okay, so we get ready and we're just
Speaker 1: doing the sound check, you know, and I'm saying, okay,
Speaker 1: well can you I want the spotlights on the study.
Speaker 1: Mystificld Limn. I can cannot do this. What do you
Speaker 1: mean there's a spotlights? Can you turn the spotlight on
Speaker 1: so we can have no But there's no bulbs. So
Speaker 1: what do you mean there's no bulbs? He says, we
Speaker 1: have a spotlight, but there's no bulbs in the spotlights.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, go get something. He says, but
Speaker 1: we don't have there's none in Egypt. We have to
Speaker 1: go to Europe to get them. What you mean you've
Speaker 1: got spot You told me there were spotlights is, yes,
Speaker 1: we have spudlights, I said, but the old bulbs said them.
Speaker 1: He said, no, it's the bugs. So we actually had that.
Speaker 1: We had a film crew with it, so we had
Speaker 1: to have the sun guns and the film crew, and
Speaker 1: that was just the start of our problems. So we
Speaker 1: had not a lot of light for the show. But
Speaker 1: of course then then, of course who turns up with
Speaker 1: the chief of Cairo Police with his wife and his
Speaker 1: two kids, and he's in his suit and she's all
Speaker 1: decked out and all her jewelry and her finery, and
Speaker 1: of course what's he wants. He wants the front row.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying to him, so excuse me, sir, but
Speaker 1: you know, I really don't. It's a rock concert. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be at the front row because you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna get bobbed by fans. Are gonna want to,
Speaker 1: you know, be close to the band. I said, you
Speaker 1: really want to be like, you know, twenty rows back
Speaker 1: or someplace, you know, someplace safe. No, no, no, and
Speaker 1: must have the front row, okay, I warned you. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: one minute into the show, kids are rushing the stage
Speaker 1: to hope places bedlam. The chief of police is fighting
Speaker 1: people off, trying to protect his wife and his kids,
Speaker 1: and Sting takes numbers at this and kind of walks
Speaker 1: over and sticks his foot out on the chief of
Speaker 1: police and taps him on the shoulder and says, you know,
Speaker 1: stub that you know because he was and if that's
Speaker 1: a huge insult in Asia. So next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I'm standing on the side of the stage and all
Speaker 1: these policemen and the chief of police is rushing up
Speaker 1: to the side of the stage and they're telling me
Speaker 1: just go he go to jail. And he taking to jail.
Speaker 1: You know. I said, what what happened? Is the chief
Speaker 1: of police and my mohammed, my fixing guy says Mr
Speaker 1: Goblin Stickers just hit the chief of police. He's going
Speaker 1: to be in jail tonight. You must do something, you know.
Speaker 1: So I have to have an apology, you know. So
Speaker 1: I waited for the song day. I walk out on
Speaker 1: stage and I said, Sting, you just kicked the chief
Speaker 1: of police at Cairo. He wants to put you in jail.
Speaker 1: You've got to apologize. And sing looks at me and
Speaker 1: says no, I said, Sting, for Christ's sake, you gotta
Speaker 1: pud No. He said he shouldn't have done that, you know.
Speaker 1: So I go back wait for the next song, and
Speaker 1: I go back out against thing. Look, this is serious.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be in jail tonight in Cairo, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if I can get you out. So I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. Let me do the talking. I'll apologize
Speaker 1: and I'll look at you and you just nod your
Speaker 1: head like you're agreeing with me. Okay, will you do that?
Speaker 1: It says, okay, I'll do that. So at the end
Speaker 1: of the show, the police are on the side of
Speaker 1: the stage. They rush out, they grab Staying and I'm
Speaker 1: all right there in front of him, and I'm going, Mr,
Speaker 1: I'm so saudy, and I'm remembering every bit of Arabic
Speaker 1: I could think of, you know. I'm we apologize and
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have happened, you know, everything I could think of,
Speaker 1: you know. And then I would look at Staying and
Speaker 1: say Sting, you know, given the sign, and he nodded
Speaker 1: an agreement, you know. And then I look back at
Speaker 1: the Chief of police. And so the bluff worked, and
Speaker 1: at the end of it, the Chief of Police turns
Speaker 1: to me and says, I don't like Zack Man, but
Speaker 1: you are honor. I go now, and how do you left?
Speaker 1: And I went up to Sting and I I went
Speaker 1: up to stay at us at Staying, I just saved
Speaker 1: you from a state worse than death. That was our
Speaker 1: story of Cairo. Let's go back to the beginning of
Speaker 1: the police's career. Legend has it that you made a
Speaker 1: unique deal with A and M. There was no upfront money,
Speaker 1: but you've got a better royalty rate. What really went
Speaker 1: down there, Well, it's true I did make a deal
Speaker 1: with A and M for no money and a very
Speaker 1: high royalty rate, but it was not necessarily because I
Speaker 1: was being so brilliant, you know, and and uh, it
Speaker 1: was really a matter of I had no choice. I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew one thing, and that is that the police
Speaker 1: had very little going for them that I could go
Speaker 1: to a record company and try to talk him into
Speaker 1: a record deal. There was no tour upcoming, there was
Speaker 1: no press, there was no fan base. It was literally nothing.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, the police were sort of
Speaker 1: shunned by the punks because they were older, and they
Speaker 1: were not recognized by the older bands and either. So
Speaker 1: basically the police were in no man's land. There was
Speaker 1: nothing to recommend him except for one thing. The music
Speaker 1: they made in the studio was great. The Chastle had
Speaker 1: rock sand so I knew the music had to speak
Speaker 1: for itself. So I figured if I went to the
Speaker 1: record label and I said, look, you know, and I
Speaker 1: set up a scenario where he only listened to the
Speaker 1: music and made a judgment based on whether you're the
Speaker 1: music or not and not. At the back of his
Speaker 1: head was you know, what's this gonna cost me? You know,
Speaker 1: is this gonna eat up my budget for the year.
Speaker 1: What's my boss gonna think? You know, suppose this fails,
Speaker 1: if I gonna look like a fool, all the sort
Speaker 1: of negatives that an average a and our guy would
Speaker 1: be having, I had to eliminate. So you only listened
Speaker 1: to music. So I went in and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I got nothing to recommend this group except about amazing music.
Speaker 1: So I want to make you a deal. I'm giving
Speaker 1: you the record for free. It's yours. You don't have
Speaker 1: to negotiate. Just give me the highest royalty you can.
Speaker 1: It's free. Now listen to the record and put on
Speaker 1: the record. And of course he heard Roxanne and all
Speaker 1: the songs and and that Police album was a great album.
Speaker 1: And I bet you it was the only time he
Speaker 1: ever listened to music without anything worrying in the back
Speaker 1: of his mind about whether, you know, this might lose
Speaker 1: his job or eat up his budget for the year
Speaker 1: or whatever. He just listened to the music and it
Speaker 1: was one of those things where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: when you got to lose, there was nothing, there was
Speaker 1: nothing to lose, And that sort of strategy was one
Speaker 1: that it worked. If I had asked for money, I'm
Speaker 1: sure he would have said no. So you make a deal.
Speaker 1: Do they put the record out in the UK? What happened, Well,
Speaker 1: the British part of the deal was, look, you'll put
Speaker 1: the single out in America, but I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know if that ever really happened, to tell you the truth.
Speaker 1: But they did put the single out in England. So
Speaker 1: Roxanne came out, but it didn't really get a lot
Speaker 1: of attention. Like I was saying, you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot really going to the police. So I decided
Speaker 1: that the only really way I could get something to
Speaker 1: happen for them was to make something happen in the USA,
Speaker 1: where nobody knew who they were. So my brother Ian
Speaker 1: had had gotten a job at the Paragon Agency, which
Speaker 1: was a booking agency. In making Georgia and being in
Speaker 1: making Georgia, they felt them they were always sort of
Speaker 1: feeling like they were off the beaten track, and to
Speaker 1: get a British group or something would be something special
Speaker 1: for them. So I called in and I said, look,
Speaker 1: you think you can book the Police for a tour
Speaker 1: of America. I don't care wherever he played, just can
Speaker 1: you get us some shows? And he said, well, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be tough. You've got no record deal and there's
Speaker 1: nobody supporting you and all that. I said, yes, there's
Speaker 1: only three guys in a ROADI literally we can. We
Speaker 1: can get by on a station wagon and a few
Speaker 1: hundred bucks a night. We can make it work because
Speaker 1: Laker Airways has got seventy five dollar tickets to America,
Speaker 1: so it's only gonna cost you if you want the
Speaker 1: bucks to get him there? Can you get me shows?
Speaker 1: And he said, well, I'll try, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: he gets five weeks of gates all in dumps. I
Speaker 1: mean the worst venues you could think of. I mean,
Speaker 1: CB g VS is famous, but it was a dump.
Speaker 1: You know, the Rat Club in Boston and well named,
Speaker 1: I might add, you know, and they played places where
Speaker 1: you know, who knows what they were. They were disco
Speaker 1: tags or whatever. But he managed to get shows. But
Speaker 1: the funny thing was the show that he did in
Speaker 1: Syracuse was in a cold night and only four people
Speaker 1: showed up. I mean, after all, it was a group
Speaker 1: that we've ever heard of. Why should they show up,
Speaker 1: you know, some club and uh, four people show up
Speaker 1: and the police decide, you know, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: four people actually bought tickets and here in the Syracuse
Speaker 1: Modius there we are, so you know what, let's go
Speaker 1: out and give him a great show. So how they went.
Speaker 1: They did a killer show. And one of those four
Speaker 1: people turned out to be a DJ at m i
Speaker 1: Q University back in Boston who had a radio show
Speaker 1: and he was so named with a group that would
Speaker 1: walk out and do that that he started. They gave
Speaker 1: him the Rock Sande single that they had got they
Speaker 1: had pressed up in England, and he started banging out
Speaker 1: on the station and next thing you know, some other
Speaker 1: stations picked up on it and it became a regional
Speaker 1: hit in the in the whole Northeast. And uh, in January,
Speaker 1: Jerry Moss, who was always looking at you know, the
Speaker 1: Emma Vane and Records started looking at who was looking
Speaker 1: at Billboard, as all the record people do. They look
Speaker 1: on the radio charts in the back pages of Billboard magazine,
Speaker 1: which is the sort of the music business magazine. And
Speaker 1: he saw that one of the biggest imports was the
Speaker 1: Police and it had A and M Records next to me.
Speaker 1: So he knew me from the past that we called
Speaker 1: me up and he said, Myles, is this uh my band?
Speaker 1: Is this Police that says A and M Records? Does
Speaker 1: that mean it's an America too? And I said, yeah
Speaker 1: it is. He said, well, you're you're the top ad
Speaker 1: on on Northeast radio, you know. I said, well, let's
Speaker 1: do something. He said, well, let's get the band over
Speaker 1: here again. We'll put the record out. I said, fantastic.
Speaker 1: So I called my brother Ian again. I said, I
Speaker 1: in okay, the record companies now behind us, get us
Speaker 1: a tour. Can you book us another tour? And sure enough,
Speaker 1: about two months later, the Police head off to America
Speaker 1: again for our second tour, this time with A and
Speaker 1: M banking. And that was really the start of the
Speaker 1: Police in America. But it was that, you know, I
Speaker 1: I often get asked by people you know, what was
Speaker 1: the most important show you ever did? And they would
Speaker 1: imagine I would say something like, you know cha stadium,
Speaker 1: you know eighty thousand people that sold out in a
Speaker 1: few minutes. And I said, no, no, no, no. The
Speaker 1: most important show the Police ever did was the four
Speaker 1: people in Syracuse on that first tour. It just so
Speaker 1: happened that one of those four people happened to be important. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the legend on the Police is they did not
Speaker 1: like each other, sometimes stronger hated each other. He was
Speaker 1: that true? And b was that true from the beginning.
Speaker 1: The story of the Police really is is this is
Speaker 1: that it was? It was an interesting dynamic. Uh, there
Speaker 1: were three threes. There was the three brothers, story, Ian
Speaker 1: and I, each playing a different role. Stewart created the Police,
Speaker 1: He came up with a name. It was his idea.
Speaker 1: He always thought it was his band. Sting wrote to
Speaker 1: hit songs, and it was the look and and he
Speaker 1: was a great player, and he was sort of the
Speaker 1: peacemaker between them, you know, so I think there was
Speaker 1: there was There was always some sort of let's say,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't quite call it animosity, but Stewart looked at
Speaker 1: as his band. But he also knew that Sting was
Speaker 1: really the driver of it. Uh. I as the manager,
Speaker 1: Ian as the agent, we all had a big part
Speaker 1: to play. So that was it was a combination of
Speaker 1: forces who were making the police happen. It wasn't single
Speaker 1: e Stewart or it wasn't singlely Sting, you know. So
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of the thing about that
Speaker 1: they were hated was exaggerated because they made a better story.
Speaker 1: I remember the first documentary on the police, you know,
Speaker 1: I was, I was interviewed and they asked the same question.
Speaker 1: He was asked, to the police really hate each other?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, no, actually there was. There was tension,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, because in a bandit's happening, and
Speaker 1: as crazy as it was, you know, yeah, there was tension,
Speaker 1: but no, there was no hatred. There. There was sort
Speaker 1: of a uh there were times like, for instance, when
Speaker 1: Stewart got so excited he sweeds Sting a little hard
Speaker 1: and he cracked his ring. You know, that was not
Speaker 1: because he hated Staying. That was because he was so excited,
Speaker 1: you know. And I said, but you know, I so
Speaker 1: I sort of downplayed the whole idea of the police
Speaker 1: hating each other. Well, when the documentary comes out, I'm
Speaker 1: hardly in it, and I'm looking at the documentary and
Speaker 1: I'm seeing guys in there that I didn't even know
Speaker 1: who see need to be experts on the police, and
Speaker 1: they were saying thing, oh yeah, you know, sticking story,
Speaker 1: hate each other, and oh yeah, there was an each
Speaker 1: other's throat, and I'm going and I went to the
Speaker 1: I went to the MTV people and I said, what
Speaker 1: are you doing. That's not true, and he said, well,
Speaker 1: it makes a better story. And the fact of the
Speaker 1: matter is, I'm probably the least. I knew more than
Speaker 1: anyone other than the three band members, but I'm in
Speaker 1: the least in the video because I was not telling
Speaker 1: what they wanted to hear. It's a better story that
Speaker 1: they hated each other. You know, later in later years,
Speaker 1: there was probably a bit more animosity because when they
Speaker 1: did the reunion tour, I mean, I I hear this
Speaker 1: that Staying wanted to change some of the songs and
Speaker 1: change the chords and Stewart didn't really like it. So
Speaker 1: maybe there was more animosity later on. But during the
Speaker 1: police years, you know, from from what I saw was
Speaker 1: their tension was there was there you know, naturally there
Speaker 1: would be, but there was no hatred. So how the
Speaker 1: three Copeland brothers that have a father and intelligence and
Speaker 1: all end up in the music by a complete fluke,
Speaker 1: you know? And uh, I mean it's it's one of
Speaker 1: the things that I mean, I just I just wrote
Speaker 1: a book, my memoirs, but I actually just today placed
Speaker 1: with a publisher. Uh and uh so it'll be out
Speaker 1: in three or four more months, you know. And I
Speaker 1: explained this, but it's one of the curious stories that
Speaker 1: um you know. Here I was, I knew nothing about
Speaker 1: the music business, and I met a group inn in
Speaker 1: Beirut and said, look, we think you can help us.
Speaker 1: And I go to London and on my way to
Speaker 1: report to the U. S. Army because I just got drafted,
Speaker 1: and they came to me and said, we want you
Speaker 1: to be our manager. I said, well, I'd love to,
Speaker 1: but crazy idea, but I'm drafted, you know. So I
Speaker 1: went off to America got rejected by the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army because I have high arches, you know, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even trying to get out of the army, but they
Speaker 1: rejected me. I was one of two thousand people, the
Speaker 1: only one to get rejected. So I felt, in a
Speaker 1: way sort of bad, except that it was Vietnam time
Speaker 1: and all my friends were trying to figure out way
Speaker 1: to get out of the army and I had inadvertently
Speaker 1: got out of it. But I sent it a cable
Speaker 1: back to London saying, well, I'm out of the Army.
Speaker 1: I get a cable back from this this group that
Speaker 1: I was I ended up managing. They said, God bless
Speaker 1: your feet. Anyway, the group became Wishbone Ash, which was
Speaker 1: the first group I ever managed, and it was really
Speaker 1: a lark. I went back to London. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what I was gonna do. I I had imagined I
Speaker 1: was gonna be two years in the army and they said,
Speaker 1: we think you could help us, and you know, why not,
Speaker 1: you know, and I just said, what the hell? And
Speaker 1: next thing I knew I was in the music business. Okay,
Speaker 1: you were learning on the fly. You're obviously a smart guy,
Speaker 1: but you must have made big mistakes. Well, I think
Speaker 1: you know. One of the great lessons of life is
Speaker 1: you can just learn. You can learn things and mistakes
Speaker 1: maybe even more than successes. You know, I sure made mistakes.
Speaker 1: But the one thing I knew that I know what
Speaker 1: I like, So it was not something where I was
Speaker 1: always looking over my shoulder to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: how do I know it's any good? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: my my view was I like it, so it must
Speaker 1: be good, you know. And that was really it was
Speaker 1: as simple as that. And it was not a time
Speaker 1: where it was let's say, there were no classes and
Speaker 1: university to learn how to be a rock and roll manager,
Speaker 1: you know, so most managers were learning on the fly,
Speaker 1: you know. And who's to know what makes something work
Speaker 1: and something not work? You know? This has always been
Speaker 1: a mystery, you know. And it's not just money, you know.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of people that have tons of
Speaker 1: money try to make something happen. It doesn't happen. But
Speaker 1: I didn't. I knew what I liked, and I guess
Speaker 1: I didn't have the feeling that I was worse or
Speaker 1: better than anybody else, so why not And I kind
Speaker 1: of just went out and did it. And being in
Speaker 1: England where a lot of the attitudes in England at
Speaker 1: that time where you know, I would call it a
Speaker 1: glass half full country, you know, where I look at
Speaker 1: a glass half full and I would say it's it's
Speaker 1: that Sorry, I would I would put that another way.
Speaker 1: There a glass half empty country, whereas I was a
Speaker 1: glass half full country. We could look at the same glass.
Speaker 1: They would say, well it's empty, and I would say,
Speaker 1: well it's full. So I basically just said, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm not supposed to know, so well,
Speaker 1: let's just go out and do it. And I would
Speaker 1: dream up ideas, and with one of my first stunts,
Speaker 1: I went to trying to find a show. I had
Speaker 1: no idea how to get a show going, you know,
Speaker 1: and so I down the road from where I was
Speaker 1: staying with my parents. There was a college that had
Speaker 1: put on shows, and I went down there and called
Speaker 1: them up and said, look, could I get an opening
Speaker 1: slot for the show? And I was kind of put off,
Speaker 1: and so I decided to go to the college myself.
Speaker 1: So I went to the college. I met the person
Speaker 1: organizing the show as one of the students, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I've got the opening act on the show, and they go, okay,
Speaker 1: we we don't know about that, but if you say
Speaker 1: so so. And then I went back to the group
Speaker 1: and I said, look, just show up because the college
Speaker 1: stakes you're on, you know. And then headline group they
Speaker 1: showed up and they thought the college had book the
Speaker 1: opening act. So the college thought the headline acted about
Speaker 1: the opening act, and the headline acting got to college
Speaker 1: of book the act, and meanwhile, I wish I would
Speaker 1: ask for how to do the show, and nobody said
Speaker 1: anything wise, and of course we didn't get paid, but
Speaker 1: they played a show. So it was stuff like that.
Speaker 1: He was just doing it, you know. And uh that
Speaker 1: that kind of got the ball rolling. Did you get
Speaker 1: Wishbone ash their record deal? Yeah? How did you do that? Well?
Speaker 1: That was something where we did. I. I was so
Speaker 1: desperate to get shows, but I really had no clue
Speaker 1: how to do it. Uh. And I saw in the
Speaker 1: back pages of one of the music papers that there
Speaker 1: was a little book and it said the Booker's Bible
Speaker 1: and for twenty five pounds, which was the reason why
Speaker 1: money at that time, because the average of wage was
Speaker 1: something like nineteen pounds that that period, you know, so
Speaker 1: a week. So I thought, well, a booker's Bible which
Speaker 1: had every name in it. So I called up the
Speaker 1: phone number and sure enough that with the guy that
Speaker 1: answer it says, yes, it's got every phone number you
Speaker 1: could possibly want. All the clubs and all everybody the
Speaker 1: books shows, and I this guy sounded kind of crooked,
Speaker 1: you know, and I thought, well, you know, I'll think
Speaker 1: about it. And he said, look, i'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: I'll show you how the book works. He's paying the
Speaker 1: twenty five pounds. I'll show you it works. I'll come
Speaker 1: to your house and let's get a phone, and I'll
Speaker 1: show you how the book works. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm desperate. I don't I have no clue.
Speaker 1: And the band's rehearsing and getting ready to do shows
Speaker 1: and they're gonna be asking me soon. Was our first
Speaker 1: gig and I had no gigs, you know, So I figured, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll bring this guy over. So I get this guy.
Speaker 1: Of course he looks just like the crook that he
Speaker 1: sounded like on the phone, and uh he booked some shows.
Speaker 1: Of course, first show comes around and off goes the
Speaker 1: group to the show, and of course there's no show.
Speaker 1: And uh I called him up and say, look, you
Speaker 1: there's no no no club where you said the was,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh, you've got the wrong address, and he
Speaker 1: gives me another address. The group goes to that. Of course,
Speaker 1: no show. So now I'm thinking, okay, all the shows
Speaker 1: in the book that he had booked. Because we had
Speaker 1: like eight shows in the books, they almost be funny
Speaker 1: or something's wrong. So I started calling all the places.
Speaker 1: Sure enough, everyone was like, no, we only booked discos,
Speaker 1: or no we hadn't. We don't have music groups here anymore,
Speaker 1: and everyone was a notion. So I thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Now I was so embarrassed. But I actually decided, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, cold calling is a terribly hard thing to do.
Speaker 1: Just get on the phone and started calling somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: And I decided, well, I was so embarrassed that I
Speaker 1: knew that when the group came over to the rehearsals
Speaker 1: that I would have to tell them the bad news
Speaker 1: that all the shows they thought were in the books
Speaker 1: were gone. So I got on and I started using
Speaker 1: this book well and the whole. A lot of the
Speaker 1: numbers were good, and I started booking. I actually booked
Speaker 1: three shows, one of which Wasn't a show which was
Speaker 1: opening for Deep Purple in a place just outside of London.
Speaker 1: And Richie Blackmore, the guitarist of Deep Purple, saw wish
Speaker 1: Bone Ash I thought they were pretty good and men
Speaker 1: and mentioned it. The producer friend of his who then
Speaker 1: called me up and said, look, I'd like to produce
Speaker 1: your group. So that's how I met Derek Lawrence, who
Speaker 1: ended up producing the first Wished One ash album. So
Speaker 1: it's really Richie Blackmore from Deep Purple, who who had
Speaker 1: put his producer on it and who called me and
Speaker 1: what did I know, but sounded like a decent producer,
Speaker 1: and he said he could get me a record deal,
Speaker 1: and he did. He got a deal with a record
Speaker 1: And why was it the band bigger in the US?
Speaker 1: I think really it was cause they never really wrote
Speaker 1: that hit song and their vocals were never really killer.
Speaker 1: They were a good workman and like group um, and
Speaker 1: their disadvantage is that they, you know, they really did
Speaker 1: make a hit in America. You could have a lot
Speaker 1: of bands that are great, but if they don't have
Speaker 1: that hit song that gets all over the radio, it's
Speaker 1: never really gonna make it, you know. And wish One
Speaker 1: never really had that killer song. I mean, they had
Speaker 1: some songs that worked in the worldands for instance, or
Speaker 1: this town or that town, but overall, it just never
Speaker 1: was an act that had that winning song. And the
Speaker 1: vocals were okay, you know, the musicianship was great, but
Speaker 1: that really wasn't enough to make them a big, big deal.
Speaker 1: It made them an okay deal, you know. But I
Speaker 1: learned a lot, you know. It took me out across
Speaker 1: the country. I did shows all over America. I got
Speaker 1: involved with other groups, so I would say they were
Speaker 1: a learning experience, and uh, I valued that and it
Speaker 1: it came to be a great bunch of lessons and
Speaker 1: I applied to the police in later years. So how
Speaker 1: did you get involved with the Climax blues band? That
Speaker 1: was a band that I had heard records of them,
Speaker 1: and they had a great guitar player and they had
Speaker 1: great Volk goals. And I was in England obviously, and
Speaker 1: I had seen them advertised, but they were abandoned. Had
Speaker 1: been around for quite a while, but it never seemed
Speaker 1: to be getting anywhere. And so I basically as a lark,
Speaker 1: I said to them, Um, you know, I called him
Speaker 1: up and I said, look, I'm I'm a manager and
Speaker 1: I would like to represent you. And I know you've
Speaker 1: never been to America before. I could take you to
Speaker 1: America and uh, you know, you don't have a manager,
Speaker 1: and I think I could help you. And they were
Speaker 1: they basically put me off and uh. I kept calling
Speaker 1: them and they kept putting me off. And then one
Speaker 1: day I saw that they were playing in a local
Speaker 1: club in London, and I called him up and said, look, well,
Speaker 1: let me meet you in person at the club and uh,
Speaker 1: let's see if we can work something out. Well, I
Speaker 1: went down to the club. There's a place called the
Speaker 1: Marquee Club on on Wardor Street in the West end
Speaker 1: of London, and I'm there and of course they don't
Speaker 1: At the time they were supposed to meet, they didn't
Speaker 1: show up, and I waited an hour and they never
Speaker 1: showed up. So I said, the hell with it, the
Speaker 1: hell with them. I started walking back to my office
Speaker 1: and I'm walking down the street and just as they
Speaker 1: get to the street, corner of van comes whizzing by
Speaker 1: and I almost hit me, you know, and in the
Speaker 1: band was the Climax blues band. They thought I was
Speaker 1: sitting there on the street corner waiting for them to
Speaker 1: pass by, that that was that keen and on signing them.
Speaker 1: Actually I had said to hell when I was going home,
Speaker 1: but they waved and I realized it was them. So
Speaker 1: I walked back to the Marquee Club and they were
Speaker 1: Now they were like Okay, this guy must be real.
Speaker 1: He was so keen, honest, he waited on the street
Speaker 1: corner for us. So we made a deal. I became
Speaker 1: the manager. So were you involved with them when they
Speaker 1: had their big hits like I Couldn't Get It Right
Speaker 1: and who I Love You? Yeah, they couldn't get it right?
Speaker 1: Was really Uh. They had delivered an album and they
Speaker 1: had no hit on it, and I said to them, guys,
Speaker 1: you know I can make you much bigger than you are,
Speaker 1: but you've got to have that hit song and I
Speaker 1: don't hear it on the record, so you've got to
Speaker 1: go back to the studio. And I put up a
Speaker 1: bunch of names that have songs that I thought they
Speaker 1: could cover that might work. But they were against that,
Speaker 1: and they said, well, I think we have one, and
Speaker 1: they went and they wrote Couldn't Get It Right, And
Speaker 1: we went into studio and cut that. When I heard it,
Speaker 1: I realized that was the song that we needed, and
Speaker 1: of course it was. It went to number three in
Speaker 1: America and I think a number five in England and
Speaker 1: that that was the first big hit they had. Um
Speaker 1: and uh. So I I do take some credit for
Speaker 1: the fact that I pushed them to come up with
Speaker 1: the hit song, and that did um project them into
Speaker 1: a bigger marketplace. But by that time I was always
Speaker 1: having my own troubles financially and we ended up partying ways,
Speaker 1: and later on they had the song I Love You,
Speaker 1: which I was not part of. Okay, tell me more
Speaker 1: about these financial troubles. Partly because wish vawon Ash was
Speaker 1: a group that couldn't really I mean, we're not going
Speaker 1: to come up with a hit song. They were really
Speaker 1: going to make it live. And most of the bands
Speaker 1: I was working with, including Glimyss bands were great live bands,
Speaker 1: where you know, you're dealing with an audience, and what's
Speaker 1: live is a bit different than than a hit single
Speaker 1: on the radio, you know. So I figured if I
Speaker 1: could make the bands succeed through big concerts, then that
Speaker 1: would get them to be big enough, you know, that
Speaker 1: would break them wide open. And one of the markets
Speaker 1: where we were had not really broken yet was Europe.
Speaker 1: And so I dreamed that this idea that if I
Speaker 1: could put Wishbone Ash on with some other big acts
Speaker 1: and make it look like Wishbone was a headlighter, and
Speaker 1: we go do all these festivals in Europe, and I
Speaker 1: go spend the money to hire you know, Blue Red
Speaker 1: and John McLaughlin and all these various acts that we
Speaker 1: were working with. We were thinking about that I could
Speaker 1: make Wishbone Ash and Climax and the other bands I
Speaker 1: was working with look good, and in concept it was
Speaker 1: sort of a lot of pellucidt before a lot of pelluction. Conceptually,
Speaker 1: it was great and it worked. The problem was a
Speaker 1: lot of the technicalities of it were difficult and very expensive,
Speaker 1: and pretty soon I was cleaned out of money. I
Speaker 1: just had didn't didn't have the money to finance something
Speaker 1: like this. I mean, we we hired two planes and
Speaker 1: we go load up the equipment on the airplanes, you know,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, in't that great? We got our own,
Speaker 1: our own planes. You know. The pilot shows up, realizes
Speaker 1: the plane super overweight with all equipment. He says, get
Speaker 1: that shut off my plane. You know, that was the
Speaker 1: start of our troubles. I had to hire trucks to
Speaker 1: carry the equipment to the next show, and one thing
Speaker 1: after another. Then lou Reid didn't show up. So we're
Speaker 1: trying to find out what happened to lou Reid, and
Speaker 1: uh turns out he was in Australia, you know. So
Speaker 1: I caught his agent, who was William Marson the time,
Speaker 1: and they said, well we we we've got a we've
Speaker 1: got a phone number for you, but uh um, you
Speaker 1: have to deal with it yourself. So I finally get
Speaker 1: him in his hotel room and in uh Australia, and
Speaker 1: his friend Rachel answers the phone said, uh uh hi,
Speaker 1: smiles Copeland. I wanted to know when lou Reid's gonna
Speaker 1: show up, because you know the dates are in a week.
Speaker 1: We needed no when we can pick him up at
Speaker 1: the airport, and only well, uh, lou uh doesn't know
Speaker 1: about the tour. He said, well, what do you mean
Speaker 1: I know about the door? Is it gonna talk to Louis? Well,
Speaker 1: he's in the bathroom. I said, well, I'll wait, and
Speaker 1: Rachel says, well, he's been here for three days, so
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a lot of weight. But but what
Speaker 1: do you mean three days? Well, he's been in there
Speaker 1: three days and he won't come out. So I knew
Speaker 1: by then we were in deep trouble. Of course, lou
Speaker 1: Reid never showed up. He had fired the agent beforehand, apparently,
Speaker 1: so I had to scamper around and find that we
Speaker 1: we finally found a Continua Turner to do the shows
Speaker 1: in his place. But of course we're trying to book
Speaker 1: them at the last minute, so of course the price
Speaker 1: tag went went up. Anyway, I got cleaned out, I was,
Speaker 1: I was on the verge of bankruptcy, and that was
Speaker 1: really the start of me. I mean, I lost everything.
Speaker 1: My brother's store was in curved there, and Climax Blues
Speaker 1: Band eventually left, Wishbone left, everybody left because I had
Speaker 1: no money, you know. But that was when the punks
Speaker 1: were coming along and nobody paid attention to them, and
Speaker 1: they had no money. So I knew what I was
Speaker 1: doing and had no money, and they didn't know what
Speaker 1: they were doing and had no money. So we were
Speaker 1: we were like destined to be together. So what was
Speaker 1: your next move with the punks? Well, I realized that
Speaker 1: they were you know, you couldn't help but pick up
Speaker 1: the British newspaper, which was the National Press, and the punks,
Speaker 1: you know, the sex pistols, the class they were all
Speaker 1: over the newspapers, you know, but the music press just
Speaker 1: shunned them, you know, And I kept thinking, well, you know,
Speaker 1: they're all over the press. And there's all this craziness
Speaker 1: and nobody pays attention to them, and everybody says they're losers.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe I can help, you know. And it
Speaker 1: just so happened that Malcolm mclair and the manager of
Speaker 1: the Sex Pistols, had an office above where I was working.
Speaker 1: I had gone back to an old office friend of
Speaker 1: mine that had loan be his office, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, can I come into your office? And I
Speaker 1: needed a place to work, and Malcolm McLaren was upstairs,
Speaker 1: so I'd go upstairs and say, uh, Malcolm, I've been
Speaker 1: reading in the papers and no one will book the
Speaker 1: sex Pistols. But you know, I called a friend of
Speaker 1: mine at the Marquee Club and he'll book the sex
Speaker 1: bistess Um. Sorry, miss, I'm sorry, we can't do it.
Speaker 1: We're the pistols are busy that day. So I'd go
Speaker 1: back downstairs. I called the Marquee Club. I said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, give me another day. So three or four
Speaker 1: times I did this, and third, four or fourth time
Speaker 1: I went up to Malcolm. I said, okay, I got
Speaker 1: like three more shows and could you do any of these?
Speaker 1: Finally he jumps up and starts screaming at me, don't
Speaker 1: you get it? I get more pressed, saying they can't
Speaker 1: get gigs, that you're screwing up my whole rock, get
Speaker 1: the funk out of my office. So I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like stunned. I mean, but the papers saying you can't.
Speaker 1: No one will book the group. I just booked them,
Speaker 1: and I'm walking out. I had a call from a
Speaker 1: promoter in Holland saying I'll book the sex Pistols. So
Speaker 1: as I'm walking out, and I said, okay, Malco, I
Speaker 1: get it, Okay, but I do have a gig in Holland.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you'd be interested in that. He's, oh, hug,
Speaker 1: I'll do that. I said, oh, okay, well it's so
Speaker 1: I'll do Holland. He says, but I can't go, so
Speaker 1: you don't have to take the group. So I I
Speaker 1: take the sex Pistols. I do the first shows in
Speaker 1: out of England in Holland at the place called the Paradisoh,
Speaker 1: and uh I go off with Johnny Rotten and the gang.
Speaker 1: This is before sid Vicius joined the group, and uh
Speaker 1: I go off of the sex Pistols, which she, of
Speaker 1: course gave me a great credibility with all the punks.
Speaker 1: Next thing I know, Billy Idol and all these punk
Speaker 1: bands are knocking at the door saying, well, could your
Speaker 1: book shows for us? You know, So before I knew it,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, I was the guy you went
Speaker 1: to if you wanted to book a show for a
Speaker 1: punt group. So Susie and the Batshees and Billie Idols
Speaker 1: was a band called Generation X at the time. And
Speaker 1: then it was a magazine called Sniffing Glue, which was
Speaker 1: a run by a guy named Mark Perry. And he
Speaker 1: comes into the office to do an interview with when
Speaker 1: one of the bands, and nextly I know, he's moved
Speaker 1: into the office, so all of us. Before I knew it,
Speaker 1: my office was Sniffing Glues office, And of course that
Speaker 1: meant all the punt groups came to came there. And
Speaker 1: next thing I know, I'm in the punt world, you know,
Speaker 1: which was fine. Are you a manager, you a promoter?
Speaker 1: What's your rong? A bit of everything? You know, with
Speaker 1: with some some I'm managing and some I'm a promoter
Speaker 1: and some I'm a you know. And then I had
Speaker 1: friends in New York. I called an old manager friend
Speaker 1: of mine who was a publicist that I'd used with
Speaker 1: Wishfune and Climax called Jane Friedman, who was working with
Speaker 1: Patti Smith and John Kale and and UH Television. And
Speaker 1: I called her and said, Uh, You've got some mats
Speaker 1: over there that might be interesting in England. You know,
Speaker 1: I think I can get some shows for them. So
Speaker 1: so I brought Blondie and Television and tour them in England,
Speaker 1: and John Kale got him into England and UH had
Speaker 1: him produced Squeeze, who I was who had just signed
Speaker 1: for management, and I got him to work with the Police,
Speaker 1: but they didn't get on at all, so then that
Speaker 1: didn't work. But basically, before I knew it, I was
Speaker 1: I was becoming the kind of the main hon show
Speaker 1: in the punk world in England. So I started a
Speaker 1: label with Mark Perry called Step Forward Records, and UH
Speaker 1: I had Squeeze on Deptford Fund City Records and Stewart,
Speaker 1: my brother Stewart and Wayne County, the Electric Chairs and
Speaker 1: different bands on Illegal records. And I was in the
Speaker 1: punk world doing independent records and that's really how the
Speaker 1: Police got going. So how did that work out financially
Speaker 1: for you? Well, because you could make a record for
Speaker 1: eighty pounds, you know, and then I could I'd get
Speaker 1: in my car and I drive to a record store
Speaker 1: and they'd buy the records. You know, they give me
Speaker 1: the cash right there, you know. So so I was
Speaker 1: literally in the record business where not only was I
Speaker 1: in the studio making the record, I would then take
Speaker 1: the tapes to the master room to get the master done,
Speaker 1: and then to the plate maker to make the plate,
Speaker 1: and then the label maker to get the label and
Speaker 1: the sleep you know. So I was doing the lot,
Speaker 1: but you could make enough that they would pay for
Speaker 1: themselves because punks didn't really know who was who at
Speaker 1: the time, so the records either to the record store,
Speaker 1: so they would kind of you go into the store
Speaker 1: and say, well, here's my latest release, and they'd buy
Speaker 1: five boxes, you know. So it was like, well that's great.
Speaker 1: You know. Well it was great for about four or
Speaker 1: five months, and then finally you'd walk in and I'd say, well,
Speaker 1: here's my lass and said, okay, let me have a listen.
Speaker 1: How many how many fans have they got? Whoops? The
Speaker 1: bubble at burst? You know, but it was enough to
Speaker 1: get going, you know, did that carry you through to
Speaker 1: the police. Yeah, it carried me through where we were.
Speaker 1: We were handling the cramps and and and uh the
Speaker 1: fall and Sham sixty nine and see Court, all these
Speaker 1: different kind of bands. Uh, So we were sort of
Speaker 1: buzzing around. It was all sort of small time. But
Speaker 1: in in London, you know that you could be kind
Speaker 1: of small time and be successful, you know. But with
Speaker 1: the police, you know, nobody cared. And I found the
Speaker 1: studio or a friend of mine found a studio actually,
Speaker 1: and I could record the full album for a thousand pounds,
Speaker 1: which you know today would be worth five six thou dollars.
Speaker 1: So if we record the first Polate, which meant you know,
Speaker 1: that's why I could offer it for free, you know,
Speaker 1: because it really didn't cost very much. If it had
Speaker 1: been a two hund three hundred thousand dollar deal, well,
Speaker 1: of course, you know you needed money to do that,
Speaker 1: but the fact is that nobody needed money. In those days,
Speaker 1: you could record for very little. Nobody was looking. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the bands could hardly play, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't when I first saw the Clash, I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure they knew that those things at the top of
Speaker 1: the guitar were for tuning the strings. You know, okay,
Speaker 1: but going to the police. What's it like working with
Speaker 1: your brother? Well, I guess in some ways it was strange,
Speaker 1: but in some ways, you know, I'd give him his
Speaker 1: first job, you know, which was one as a tour
Speaker 1: manager for Joan Armor Trading. He had just gotten out
Speaker 1: of college, and I said, look, I've just taken on
Speaker 1: this act. Would you be the tour manager? And off
Speaker 1: he goes to America with Joan Armor Trading, and then
Speaker 1: later he comes. When he comes back, I had just
Speaker 1: signed up a violin player by the name of Daryl
Speaker 1: Way who had a group called Curved Air, and they
Speaker 1: were looking for a drummer. And cut a long story short,
Speaker 1: you know, he Darrell figured well, as Stewart's in the
Speaker 1: band and he's Miles's brother, Myles will probably pay more
Speaker 1: attention to it. So Stewart gets a gig and Curved Air,
Speaker 1: and Curved Air goes out and it is reasonably successful. Well,
Speaker 1: they were another casualty of the big fatal tour I
Speaker 1: did in Europe, you know, the Star Treking tour, which
Speaker 1: was a disaster and put me near bankruptcy. So that's
Speaker 1: when Stewart decided that you know, all this high falutant
Speaker 1: bands with lots of equipment and Rhodies and knows what.
Speaker 1: Let's strip it all down to the simplest possible thing.
Speaker 1: And that's when he came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: three people and one roadie and very little equipment like
Speaker 1: all the punks basically, which meant that for a guy
Speaker 1: like me who had no money, you know, you could
Speaker 1: actually do And they were not precious about having to
Speaker 1: be in big famous studios or whatever else. So what
Speaker 1: I said, I can record your album for a thousand pounds.
Speaker 1: They were gaged. They had nothing to lose. And then
Speaker 1: what comes first? Urga music War I r S. I
Speaker 1: r S came first because when I when I got
Speaker 1: to England with the police and they started happening, Um,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of bands back in England were saying,
Speaker 1: well what about us, you know, we we want to
Speaker 1: have a little shot in America too, you know. So
Speaker 1: I figured that I needed to find a way to
Speaker 1: get their records out in America. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: bringing them in imports and selling them some of the
Speaker 1: imports stores, but that really wasn't satisfying any of the acts.
Speaker 1: So so I went to Jerry Moss and I said, well,
Speaker 1: I figured A and M is already sort of on
Speaker 1: side in a sense. I mean they were they were
Speaker 1: sort of fans in a way. And and since the
Speaker 1: police didn't cost him a lot of money, and uh,
Speaker 1: they kind of figured I was onto something, but they
Speaker 1: didn't know quite what yet. So I went into Jerry
Speaker 1: Moss and I said, I'll tell you what. I've got
Speaker 1: these bands in England, and I'm gonna make you the
Speaker 1: same kind of deal I made for the police in
Speaker 1: the beginning. I don't need your money. I just need
Speaker 1: you to put the records out. So I'm gonna give
Speaker 1: you the records for free and you give me a
Speaker 1: label unless your own sales people decide, you know, how
Speaker 1: many they're gonna press up. Let them vet the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's down to you not you know, so
Speaker 1: there's no risk. And uh he said, okay, sounds fair enough.
Speaker 1: Let me hear the records. I said, ah, I said,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the only CAVEAT said, you can't hear
Speaker 1: the music. I said, you have to put out whatever
Speaker 1: I give you, But your own sales people can tell
Speaker 1: you how many should press up. You know, if they
Speaker 1: want to press up five, no problem, but you can't
Speaker 1: listen to music. Because I knew if he heard the music,
Speaker 1: if he heard the buzz Cox and he heard Chelsea
Speaker 1: and he heard he would say no, so lo and behold.
Speaker 1: He said, okay, I'll give me the deal. And then
Speaker 1: I went out and signed the buzz Cox. The good
Speaker 1: news was the bands like the buzz Cox and later
Speaker 1: the you know, a lot of the lot of the
Speaker 1: punk bands could not get deals in America. So if
Speaker 1: somebody came along to him and said, look, i'll put
Speaker 1: your record out in America, but I can't pay your money.
Speaker 1: I'll give you a good royalty, a lot of them said, okay,
Speaker 1: that sounds good to me. So I was signing up
Speaker 1: bands for next to nothing, and I didn't need a
Speaker 1: lot and the police were beginning to make a little
Speaker 1: bit of money at this time, so I didn't need
Speaker 1: a lot of money to launch a label. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the Cramps had a had songs they had
Speaker 1: already recorded. The buzz Cox. I picked up the record
Speaker 1: that had already been recorded in England. Um, and I
Speaker 1: kind of went down the list and picked up bands
Speaker 1: that nobody else was interested in. They couldn't get deals
Speaker 1: in America and they ain't M gave me a label
Speaker 1: and my first employee. As another sort of example is
Speaker 1: my first employee was somebody that had just gotten fired
Speaker 1: actually from the A and M College department. And I
Speaker 1: knew I couldn't afford any money, so I said, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. I'll make you vice president of the label,
Speaker 1: which for a college kate it was like a big deal.
Speaker 1: But I can only pay you a hundred bucks a week.
Speaker 1: I figured all his friends would think he was crazy,
Speaker 1: but he didn't and he ended up becoming a big,
Speaker 1: big deal and U record business. So who was it
Speaker 1: was a guy named Jay bo Berg, you know. But
Speaker 1: it was really a matter of making things so cheap
Speaker 1: that the answer had to be yes. I mean, that
Speaker 1: was part of my sales pitch was, look, if you
Speaker 1: make the answer an easy yes, you're likely to get it. Yes.
Speaker 1: If if Jay had said to me, well, I need
Speaker 1: fifty tho dollars a year salary or I'm not doing it,
Speaker 1: I would have said, well, hell were you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not hiring you. You know, if Jerry, if if I
Speaker 1: had gone to Jerry Moss and said, look, I got
Speaker 1: all these acts in England and I need a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to launch a label. He was said, get
Speaker 1: the funk out of my office. You know, if I'd
Speaker 1: gone into the A and M guy in England and said, look,
Speaker 1: I got this big, great band, the Police, but I
Speaker 1: need X, you know, they would have said, sorry, mate,
Speaker 1: no deal. You know, so I I'm a lot of
Speaker 1: the best deals I ever made were for no money
Speaker 1: up front. But that opened the door. It made it
Speaker 1: easy for somebody to say yes. And what were the
Speaker 1: first records that got the notice of A and M
Speaker 1: that were on I R S. Well, actually, after the
Speaker 1: first year you would have thought, yeah. I mean, the
Speaker 1: bus Cocks did twenty five thousand albums, which made actually
Speaker 1: made a profit for A and M. You know, not
Speaker 1: a lot, but at least it was a profit. You know,
Speaker 1: the Craft sold a bit, and uh, the Wall of
Speaker 1: Voodoo and whatever, you know, but none of them are
Speaker 1: really big hits of any course. So Jerry Moss calls
Speaker 1: me into his office to Miles, sorry to tell you this,
Speaker 1: but let's close the label. You haven't had a hit.
Speaker 1: You put out eight records and they've all nobody. They
Speaker 1: haven't any hits. I saidn't been Jerry, Uh, did you
Speaker 1: make money out of I RS of the first year?
Speaker 1: He said yeah, well but not a lot, you know.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, but you made a property right He said, yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. I said, how many deals have you ever
Speaker 1: done in your career in the music business? Unless you
Speaker 1: remember this is a guy that had the Carpenters and
Speaker 1: Peter Frampton and huge list of acts, one of the
Speaker 1: most respected labels in America. I said, how many deals
Speaker 1: have you ever done in your career in which the
Speaker 1: first year you made money on the on the deal?
Speaker 1: He said, well, actually probably none. I said yes, but
Speaker 1: you made money on my deal, didn't you. He said yeah,
Speaker 1: But now I said yes, And I said, let me
Speaker 1: ask you another question. I said, how many records does
Speaker 1: the normal acts have before they really break big and
Speaker 1: become a major act. He said, well, it's usually the
Speaker 1: third album. And I said, well, I put out eight records. Yes,
Speaker 1: but everyone was the first album of the act. None
Speaker 1: of those acts have got the album three. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. Okay, I'll give you another year, so I
Speaker 1: r S carried on for another year. At the end
Speaker 1: of that year, we signed The Go Goes and shortly thereafter,
Speaker 1: The Go Goes went the number one in the US charts,
Speaker 1: the first girl group to ever have a number one
Speaker 1: album in America where they played the music themselves and
Speaker 1: wrote all the songs. So it was our first number one.
Speaker 1: It was the biggest album of the year. It was
Speaker 1: a momentous event. Actually in Showtime just had a documentary
Speaker 1: at on the Go Goes actually, which kind of goes
Speaker 1: through the the the importance of that record. But the
Speaker 1: funny thing about The Go Gos was, I was the
Speaker 1: only person at any of the shows willing to sign
Speaker 1: this group. And was it directly done by you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I I signed him, And uh it was not. I
Speaker 1: mean there was money involved, but it was not not
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean I couldn't have afforded the major
Speaker 1: deals that people were doing, you know. So they had
Speaker 1: to be reasonable because they had there was no place
Speaker 1: else to go. Their manager had was was had had
Speaker 1: come and got to deal with me, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: I want to sign the group. She went back to
Speaker 1: the only other label that had registered you know what
Speaker 1: looked like might be interested, which was a Lecture Records,
Speaker 1: and Elector said, no, we're not signing girl groups. So
Speaker 1: she had no place to go. She came back to
Speaker 1: me and said, okay, we'll sign with you. And I
Speaker 1: went in and negotiated the deal and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: more than I wanted to spend, but a lot less
Speaker 1: than they thought they were deserved. And uh, I signed
Speaker 1: the group, and uh, I mean to me, you know,
Speaker 1: five girls who sang, who played well and had energy
Speaker 1: and were enthusiastic, and that just seemed like a great
Speaker 1: marketing think to me, you know, and how bad could
Speaker 1: it be? Of course, I had no idea the album
Speaker 1: go to number one, you know. I figured, you know,
Speaker 1: top forty be good, you know, but it just seemed
Speaker 1: to me a winner. But all the other labels went
Speaker 1: by the rules. They said, well, there's never been a
Speaker 1: girl group that had a big hit record, so we
Speaker 1: don't want to side a girl group then never even
Speaker 1: heard the music. And that was sort of how I
Speaker 1: built I r S. I. I went with what I
Speaker 1: listened to, and I thought, you know, that's good, I'll
Speaker 1: sign it. And who decided that Richard Gonnerer would produce
Speaker 1: that record. I decided that I had met Richard when
Speaker 1: he was producing the clim X Blues band, and he
Speaker 1: did the Blondie album, which I toured in England. So
Speaker 1: I had known Richard from the Sire Records days, and
Speaker 1: I knew he was unlike the average producer in that
Speaker 1: he was kind of new school and that he had
Speaker 1: just done Blondie. But he was also a songwriter. He
Speaker 1: he his his career started as a songwriter, so I
Speaker 1: knew he knew the mechanics of a hit song. And
Speaker 1: I felt that Go Go has had songs, you know,
Speaker 1: and he just seemed to be the right sensibility for me.
Speaker 1: And uh. I talked him into doing it at a
Speaker 1: price much us and he would normally get. But that's
Speaker 1: all I had. Really, I didn't have the money, you know.
Speaker 1: I said, Richard, can you do the album for this price?
Speaker 1: And he wasn't sure, and I said, well, let me
Speaker 1: send you the group and I think you're gonna like him,
Speaker 1: you know. And he did and uh, and he recorded them,
Speaker 1: but of course he went over budget, and he went
Speaker 1: about seven thousand dollars over budget. Calls me and says Miles, uh, uh,
Speaker 1: I'm over budget seven thousand. I need you to send
Speaker 1: me the money. And I said, Richard, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't have the money. And uh, I said, I said,
Speaker 1: you better hope the record sells, because that's the only
Speaker 1: way you're gonna get your money back. So luckily for him,
Speaker 1: the record sold okay. And then how does urga music
Speaker 1: were the movie come to be? Well, I was at
Speaker 1: the time becoming the I guess I R S and
Speaker 1: the Police, and we were sort of at the bandwagon
Speaker 1: of the you know, at the front of the vanguard
Speaker 1: of the whole new music scene. So when Michael White,
Speaker 1: the producer, had this idea about doing a movie, he
Speaker 1: called me up and said, would you be interested in
Speaker 1: h helping me produce this movie. I want to make
Speaker 1: a movie about all these great, fun little groups that
Speaker 1: are going on around the world, and it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be a movie about you know, we just fold each
Speaker 1: of the groups. There's no real storyline or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I said, well sure. You know, for me, it was
Speaker 1: another way I was figuring, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: get exposure for these people, you know, because the radio
Speaker 1: was still not totally on board yet, you know, and TV,
Speaker 1: MTV hadn't started yet, and you know, anyway we could
Speaker 1: get exposure to me was hey, if you if you
Speaker 1: if you'll get the exposure, Hey, I'm your guy, you know,
Speaker 1: so I said, sure, I'll help you. And of course
Speaker 1: I roped in the Police and all the bands I
Speaker 1: was working with, plus all sorts of other bands, you know,
Speaker 1: to give it credibility. We got as many bands as
Speaker 1: we could. So ERG was basically Michael White had the idea,
Speaker 1: and he got the money together, and I got the
Speaker 1: bands together, and you got the record. Yeah. I got
Speaker 1: A and M to put the record out. I didn't.
Speaker 1: It became an A and M record. I mean again,
Speaker 1: it was there was some money involved, and at the
Speaker 1: time I didn't have any money, so I gave it
Speaker 1: to A and M. Let's go back to the police.
Speaker 1: Police are relatively unique in that every album was bigger
Speaker 1: than the previous one, and they were all successful during
Speaker 1: this run. Did you ever go back to A and
Speaker 1: M and renegotiate? Uh? Yes? And no? Okay, first place, Uh,
Speaker 1: your first statement is incorrect. Okay. In America, okay, the
Speaker 1: first record went out and did very well. The second
Speaker 1: record was released in America and did three quarters of
Speaker 1: what the first one did, so it was not as successful.
Speaker 1: In England. The opposite happened. The first record was released
Speaker 1: in England and just almost disappeared without a trace. The
Speaker 1: second album went straight to number one and it was
Speaker 1: complete bedlam in England. Okay it was you know, we
Speaker 1: had three hit single, three number one hit singles in
Speaker 1: a row. So England and Europe was completely different to America.
Speaker 1: America was a slow build. It wasn't until the fifth
Speaker 1: album that the Police had a number one record in
Speaker 1: America and that was became the Synchronicity, and you know,
Speaker 1: that became the biggest album. But the second album was
Speaker 1: not not the biggest, uh. It was was about well,
Speaker 1: I think the first album went out did like half
Speaker 1: a million. Second album that, you know, three hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't it takes time to build America,
Speaker 1: you know, and but in England it was quick. The
Speaker 1: second album just went gang busters crazy, you know, and
Speaker 1: in Europe was saying the same a lot of around
Speaker 1: the world. So the police were really bigger around the world,
Speaker 1: faster than they were in America. So you had to
Speaker 1: have a different strategy in each part of the world,
Speaker 1: which is part of the reason why I went around
Speaker 1: the world with the police, because I knew that those
Speaker 1: photographs to do well in places like You're up Japan, Australia,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it would help in America, but in
Speaker 1: America it's really you know, you're battling station by station
Speaker 1: by station by station. You know, as part of the
Speaker 1: problem of our system in America, you know there're how
Speaker 1: many national radio stations are there? You know, well, you
Speaker 1: know there aren't really you know, so it was a
Speaker 1: louder Okay, you could be big in Boston, but you'd
Speaker 1: be unknown in l A. You know. So America takes
Speaker 1: this time, whereas in England you get on the BBC
Speaker 1: and you've got the whole country day one, you know,
Speaker 1: so a lot of European countries in the same way.
Speaker 1: You know, you have one national station pretty much covers
Speaker 1: the country, whereas in America it's a it's a much
Speaker 1: slower building. Yeah, so what about renegotiating. Okay, as far
Speaker 1: as we renegotiated, but of course, um after the it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the second or third record though, well, actually
Speaker 1: the second record became huge in England. And I had
Speaker 1: a lawyer who was who was a very famous lawyer,
Speaker 1: caller Groupman, and he always figured, well, you know, his
Speaker 1: famous quote was, it's not about the money, It's about
Speaker 1: the money. So his view was, if you could renegotiate,
Speaker 1: go get the money. They albou the royalty, you know,
Speaker 1: just get the money. So it wasn't long before, you know,
Speaker 1: we went in and renegotiated, and I think we probably
Speaker 1: renegotiated on every album, you know, to get a bit
Speaker 1: more wealthy points. And sure we got higher royalty points
Speaker 1: and we got more money and all that, and the
Speaker 1: police did very well, you know. But often I think
Speaker 1: back and I think, well, what really is the smartest strategy,
Speaker 1: because there was an opposite strategy which I was uniquely
Speaker 1: aware of, and that was the R. E M strategy.
Speaker 1: I signed R E M for dollars because my brother
Speaker 1: Ian had met them and down he wasn't making Georgia
Speaker 1: and they were in Athens, Georgia, and he told me
Speaker 1: and he said, look, you gotta sign this group, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I signed him, you know, and they built
Speaker 1: a lot of fans in the in the company, and uh,
Speaker 1: every record did more than the last that correct. Next
Speaker 1: record was you know, seventy, next record was a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand, and they kept creeping up and every
Speaker 1: advance would go higher. And as we began to realize
Speaker 1: this was a group that was going places. You know,
Speaker 1: I would they call him in the office and speak
Speaker 1: to the manager and say, look, we'd like to give
Speaker 1: you more money and uh per record and increase your
Speaker 1: royalties and uh in return, you know it, give us
Speaker 1: a couple more records at the end of the deal.
Speaker 1: And their response was, well, look, we're fine. You know,
Speaker 1: we got enough money. We don't need anymore. We're happy
Speaker 1: with the deal as it is. So you know what,
Speaker 1: we'll just do the deal and we'll go through the
Speaker 1: contract and at the end of the deal, we'll come
Speaker 1: to you and say, well we're open now, and you know,
Speaker 1: we'll wait for an offer from you and from the
Speaker 1: open market, and we'll see what happens. He said, but
Speaker 1: you know, we love your company and you know we're
Speaker 1: open for anything. You know, but no, we don't need
Speaker 1: so I couldn't renegotiate. So the next record went out
Speaker 1: was bigger, and you know, we got to the last
Speaker 1: album and I'm thinking we're gonna lose r E M.
Speaker 1: You know, so of course trying to renegotiate. Look, we'll
Speaker 1: even give you, we'll back date the royalties, you know,
Speaker 1: we'll we'll give you back your masters. You know, No,
Speaker 1: we're fine, We're fine. We're fine. Meanwhile, like where is
Speaker 1: the police? Renegotiated every time, and then Sting when I
Speaker 1: was managing this thing, renegotiated his contract every time, and
Speaker 1: you know, he made more and more money. I made
Speaker 1: more money, you know. But then R A M go
Speaker 1: off and the deal's over, and they come to me
Speaker 1: and say, well, the deal's over. We love your you know,
Speaker 1: we love I RS. So we're going to the marketplace
Speaker 1: and you can make an offer like everybody else, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna go with the best offer. So the money
Speaker 1: went up and up, and you know, I got to
Speaker 1: a point it was three million, and it's like that
Speaker 1: was about as far as I could go. And I
Speaker 1: went to Jerry Moss and he said, well, I'll help you.
Speaker 1: I'll put up a couple of million, you know. And
Speaker 1: the group comes in and says, well, we've just been
Speaker 1: to Warner Brothers and they're offering more than that. And
Speaker 1: I went back to Jerry and it said, Jerry, can
Speaker 1: you we're gonna lose R. E M. Can you up
Speaker 1: the offer? And he said I could. We're at five million.
Speaker 1: I mean, we can't go more than that, you know,
Speaker 1: and they want they want their their masters back and said,
Speaker 1: I can't do that. So I brought the managers back
Speaker 1: in again. And they're very honorable guys. I have to
Speaker 1: admit they were really good people. And they said, look, Miles,
Speaker 1: we've just been back to Warner Brothers and here's what
Speaker 1: they just told us. And then here's here's the letter
Speaker 1: contract and they said, whatever Miles offers you will pay
Speaker 1: you double. And I said, guys, I looked at that
Speaker 1: paper with incredutibility. I looked at that thing, and I said, guys,
Speaker 1: here's my advice. Get out of my office right now,
Speaker 1: go straight to Warner Brothers. Signed that deal before they
Speaker 1: changed their mind. And I gotta say, that's the best
Speaker 1: deal iver Seed and guys, congratulations, I'm proud of and
Speaker 1: they left. They went to Warner Brothers and they signed
Speaker 1: the biggest record deal in history. And then again when
Speaker 1: that deal expired and all their rights returned and they
Speaker 1: resigned again. They made the biggest record deal in the
Speaker 1: history of the music business. And I have to say
Speaker 1: that now when I look back at it, and I say,
Speaker 1: the Alan grouping method of hitting him every renegotiate, every
Speaker 1: deal and up the money and whatever. Versus the R
Speaker 1: and D r M deal. R E M made more
Speaker 1: money than the police, a lot more because they ended
Speaker 1: up with total freedom to get all the rights of
Speaker 1: back to their masters, and it just ended up being
Speaker 1: a phenomenal deal. They actually did do it historically, the
Speaker 1: biggest record deal ever. Okay, as a manager, how much
Speaker 1: do you charge? Uh? In the case of the police,
Speaker 1: we were all on it together, so we we we
Speaker 1: split it four away, so everybody made and out of
Speaker 1: I gave part of it. I gave my I gave
Speaker 1: to a partner who was with the police every single
Speaker 1: day on the road, so I was making less. But
Speaker 1: the management commission was The management commissions historically go from
Speaker 1: fift Some managers take as much as and it really
Speaker 1: depends on what the manager's offering, and it depends on
Speaker 1: the negotiating position of the group, all sorts of things. Well,
Speaker 1: you've managed a lot of bands, do you commission the
Speaker 1: recording budget? Do you take from the net on the road?
Speaker 1: What kind of deals do you I think you can't
Speaker 1: really record from the recording budget because the band doesn't
Speaker 1: receive that. I re commissioned what they get. Okay, I
Speaker 1: don't commission um money that goes to recording studio whatever
Speaker 1: on the on the concerts. You know, I I commissioned
Speaker 1: the profit of the concerts, you know. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: still get paid on police records? Yes. And one of
Speaker 1: one of the things I was very precious about was
Speaker 1: to say, look, I am not into renting myself as
Speaker 1: a manager. If I'm gonna roll on my starta fleaves
Speaker 1: and fight for you guys, we're all in this together,
Speaker 1: so let's be in it all the way. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna be simply working for you for five years and
Speaker 1: then I get nothing, Although nowadays some acts think that
Speaker 1: that's fair, you know. So if some act came to
Speaker 1: me and they were already successful so that I could
Speaker 1: bank the money, you know, and then it was like
Speaker 1: a no brainer I could. I could say, Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna pay me. I'm gonna automatically make X million
Speaker 1: dollars a year, so okay, you know what, after five years,
Speaker 1: you're free to go on your your own. In that case,
Speaker 1: I would say okay, because there's no risk I'm gonna
Speaker 1: make money. I've heard of a manager saying well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll manage an act and I would make it. You
Speaker 1: paid me a million dollars a year and I'll manage it.
Speaker 1: I'd say, that's not a bad management deal because you're
Speaker 1: making a million dollars a year and have you're only
Speaker 1: doing it for five years. Well okay, but the police
Speaker 1: nobody wanted the police. It was a pure risk. I
Speaker 1: invested in the first album. I paid for that first album.
Speaker 1: I paid for that first tour. Okay, so I invested.
Speaker 1: It's something which had almost everybody said it was a
Speaker 1: no hoper, but all four of us were in it together.
Speaker 1: So that was really why I kept my rot. Did
Speaker 1: you have paper with the band? Yeah. Eventually, after after
Speaker 1: we made the record deal and the record went out
Speaker 1: and started successful, we made we made a deal and
Speaker 1: that's when they said, well I have to, you know,
Speaker 1: have a partner. And I agreed. Actually out there was
Speaker 1: only fair. I mean, I've always been someone that agreed
Speaker 1: that you you've got somebody good working with, you give
Speaker 1: them a reward more than just a salary, which is
Speaker 1: why I gave a percentage of the record company to
Speaker 1: j Bowberg. I gave a percentage of Police. Most of
Speaker 1: the companies I've done business with, I've always given one
Speaker 1: of the key people in the company a piece of
Speaker 1: the action, so that they felt that it was more
Speaker 1: than just a job, that it was their like And
Speaker 1: that's always worked for me. I've never been afraid to
Speaker 1: give part of the you know, the business away. Now
Speaker 1: A and M was ultimately sold to Polygraham gobbled up
Speaker 1: becomes part of Universal. Have they ever approached you to
Speaker 1: buy out your royalty stream? Okay, they came to me
Speaker 1: when when the I R S here was coming to
Speaker 1: a close, Jerry called me in and said, look, would
Speaker 1: you be interested in selling the label? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not opposed to it, except that I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: just sell it. What I would do is will make
Speaker 1: a financial deal, but I want you to exchange I
Speaker 1: R S sharfs A and M shares, give me shares
Speaker 1: of A and M, so we're all in this together.
Speaker 1: And he agreed. He said that sounds like a reasonable deale.
Speaker 1: Of course, I wasn't expecting. I mean, A and M
Speaker 1: was a lot bigger label than I RS was, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't expecting to walk away with half the label.
Speaker 1: But you know, five ten percent of A and M
Speaker 1: would have been worth millions of dollars, you know. So
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later, I go back and said, okay, um,
Speaker 1: you're ready to make an offer. So what's the offering is? Well,
Speaker 1: I can't actually give you shares because we're a sub
Speaker 1: chapter S corporation, and that means I can't give you
Speaker 1: shares in the company, but we're prepared to buy you
Speaker 1: and he and he pulled out some daughter figure which
Speaker 1: was really just not very interesting to me, and I
Speaker 1: got so angry I stormed out of the office. And uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, Jerry and I later became very good friends,
Speaker 1: and in some ways I wish I had figured some
Speaker 1: way to do a deal with him, because when we
Speaker 1: went to m C A was really not quite the same.
Speaker 1: And then we went to m I and whatever whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, we became the corporation and we really didn't
Speaker 1: want to become. But it was a lesson. I mean,
Speaker 1: I learned a lot of lessons along the way. You
Speaker 1: know what what the corporate world really is. You know,
Speaker 1: when IRA started and when the police started, we were
Speaker 1: flying by the seat of our pants. We had nothing
Speaker 1: to lose. Everything was cheap. I could be crazy. I
Speaker 1: could sign crazy acts, and I signed a lot of
Speaker 1: crazy acts, you know. Um, but they were ones where
Speaker 1: I could afford it, you know, and the ones that
Speaker 1: if if they didn't work, too bad, you know. But
Speaker 1: it was fun on the way, you know. Um. Whereas
Speaker 1: when you all of a sudden part of the corporation
Speaker 1: and they're talking millions of dollars and whatever, they want
Speaker 1: to see hit records, and they're not interested in whether
Speaker 1: you have an act that's cool or not. They're interested
Speaker 1: in whether you're selling records or not. And that's quite
Speaker 1: a jolt for someone like me, you know, to be
Speaker 1: thrown out of the world of doing something this hip
Speaker 1: and cool, and you know you're you're doing it for
Speaker 1: the for the love of the music, versus you have
Speaker 1: to make numbers or they're gonna fire, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's okay. So who owns the Masters of I RS today? Well,
Speaker 1: now it's all owned by Universal And how did that
Speaker 1: come to me? Well? Universal Body and M Universal Body,
Speaker 1: m C A UM Universal Body, am I. You know.
Speaker 1: So I ended up selling I R S E M
Speaker 1: I UM because we needed the money and E M
Speaker 1: I made us a pretty nice offer. And they were
Speaker 1: busy trying to build their their their business and I
Speaker 1: looked at it and said, well, you know, the business
Speaker 1: has changed. It's not as fun anymore. And you know,
Speaker 1: we've been at it long enough and about time that
Speaker 1: I made something because I never made anything out of
Speaker 1: virus at the beginning. You know, Um, I had staff
Speaker 1: that were getting paid, but I wasn't. You know, it
Speaker 1: was a labor of love basically, if I was making
Speaker 1: money managing the police in staying you know, so I
Speaker 1: never really thought about money. But when we sold the
Speaker 1: E M I, they ended up buying the label, and
Speaker 1: then of course Universal buy C M I. And they
Speaker 1: owned the Beatles. You know, they owned Frank Sinaga, they
Speaker 1: owned I R S, they owned the Police, they owned
Speaker 1: the lot. Okay, you're on both sides of it. You've
Speaker 1: been a manager, and you've also cut royalties, meaning you've
Speaker 1: paid royalties. Traditionally it's an opaque system and the labels
Speaker 1: don't pay a hundred cents on the dollar. What can
Speaker 1: you tell us about that, both in terms of what
Speaker 1: you paid and also trying to collect. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's like every single deal, there's two sides to it.
Speaker 1: I would say that since the record business, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like everybody says well, nine out of ten acts failed. Well,
Speaker 1: nine out of ten acts were financed by the record companies.
Speaker 1: So let's say the act fails and they got an
Speaker 1: advance of two hundred thousand dollars. Okay, So the record
Speaker 1: company gives the act two hundred thousand dollars, They spend
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand making the record, and they pocket a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Record goes out in bombs. Record label lost
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand dollars. The act made money for a
Speaker 1: short time, so the labeled was a loser in that deal.
Speaker 1: Now one out of that one out of ten succeeded. Well,
Speaker 1: from a business standpoint, the label is thinking, well, that
Speaker 1: one that succeeds has got to pay for all those losers.
Speaker 1: So obviously we can't pay a hunter. But you know,
Speaker 1: we can't pay like there was no losers because they
Speaker 1: don't know who's gonna be the winner and who's the loser.
Speaker 1: So in most record deals they have to figure that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can pay a royalty to the act, or a
Speaker 1: fifteen percent royalty or attention, whatever the number is. Okay,
Speaker 1: But he gets up to about you. You're getting to
Speaker 1: the sort of upper reaches of the big superstar deals,
Speaker 1: you know. But then they've got to do marketing. They've
Speaker 1: gotta pay for the staff, they gotta pay for buying
Speaker 1: records onto the radio. All the amount of money that
Speaker 1: it costs to make a record happen. So I would
Speaker 1: argue that record labels in many cases, or in most cases,
Speaker 1: lose money on an act. Yes, they make money on
Speaker 1: the winning acts, and they do so because it helps
Speaker 1: pay for the loser acts. And I've known loser a
Speaker 1: big big winner acts that says, well, why should I
Speaker 1: pay for the losers? And I'd say, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: You're right, But then again, who was to know you
Speaker 1: were a winner? You could have just as easily been
Speaker 1: one of those losers. Let's assume you're a winner. And
Speaker 1: the contract says ex royalty. Traditionally labels don't pay a
Speaker 1: hundred cents on the dollar on that. Well, they don't
Speaker 1: pay a hundred cents on the dollar because they gotta
Speaker 1: pay for the pressing. No no, no, no no. When
Speaker 1: we get to the net, okay, and we look at
Speaker 1: the contract, it says, let's just assume teen percent royalty.
Speaker 1: The net net net is a million dollars. I should
Speaker 1: get a hundred thousand dollars. Okay, it seems like the
Speaker 1: record company doesn't pay that hundred thousand dollars. Hasn't that
Speaker 1: been your experience? It really depends on the company what
Speaker 1: the deal is going to be. I've never I've not
Speaker 1: had a problem with I mean, I didn't have a
Speaker 1: problem they and am they paid. We did. We did
Speaker 1: audits on labels, so we did find money, but we
Speaker 1: didn't find very much, and a lot most of it
Speaker 1: was accounting mistakes. Okay, there are there have been some
Speaker 1: labels have been been crooked, you know, And that's just
Speaker 1: the fact of life, you know. And and the reality
Speaker 1: is their accident crooked and they're labels that are crooked.
Speaker 1: And believe me, I've seen both. Okay. But when you
Speaker 1: look at the finances of the record business, you realize
Speaker 1: that a lot of money is thrown away, and a
Speaker 1: lot of it stupidly, to tell you the truth. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's the reason why a lot of the deals
Speaker 1: a lot as good as it should be for the
Speaker 1: winner acts because the labels are losing on the losers.
Speaker 1: They gotta make it on the winners. And a lot
Speaker 1: of the labels also, one of the things I learned
Speaker 1: when they got d M I is that a lot
Speaker 1: of the executive salaries are whopping salaries, you know, way
Speaker 1: higher than it should be. And that the the salaries
Speaker 1: of the executives, I mean, they're more interested in the
Speaker 1: shares and the salaries and there are you know, they
Speaker 1: they want to up their fees because they want to
Speaker 1: break some act. So they bury the loser acts. And
Speaker 1: they waved the flag saying, look I I signed so
Speaker 1: and so you know. So I have a mixed feeling about,
Speaker 1: you know, whether deals are fair or not. And I
Speaker 1: would have to say, having been on both sides of
Speaker 1: the deal, I've seen things that are unfair on the
Speaker 1: record side and not seeing things that are unfair on
Speaker 1: the act side. But nine times out of ten, it's
Speaker 1: the act that makes the money and the record label
Speaker 1: the loses. Okay, do you foresee the police breaking up
Speaker 1: and how do you end up as the manager's sting? Well?
Speaker 1: I think Sting was smart enough to know that, you know,
Speaker 1: it takes a lot more than you know one guy
Speaker 1: writing songs and putting a band together. You know, you
Speaker 1: need an organization behind you. And he knew that I
Speaker 1: was good at what I was doing. And he also
Speaker 1: knew that I was good at let's call it thinking
Speaker 1: out of the box, not being stuck in some kind
Speaker 1: of rules, you know, and he wanted to break the rules,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, in the case of the police,
Speaker 1: none of us really wanted the police to break up,
Speaker 1: even Sting, I mean, because it was kind of like
Speaker 1: the Golden Goose. So if you remember back, nobody really
Speaker 1: made an announcement, Okay, the police are broken up. Now
Speaker 1: Stings solo, it kind of like, well, we're not really
Speaker 1: saying the police broke up, even though we kind of
Speaker 1: think they have. But Sting is gonna do a solo
Speaker 1: record and maybe he'll do another police album. We don't
Speaker 1: really know. And it wasn't until Andy Summers did a
Speaker 1: solo record a couple of years later that he had
Speaker 1: as a publicity he kind of said, well, really, the
Speaker 1: police are kind of broken up, you know, But we
Speaker 1: always kind of hit it. None of us wanted to
Speaker 1: say definitively the police are broken up, because it was
Speaker 1: kind of like killing something that was an asset. Why
Speaker 1: if you don't have to, um, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of people knew, I mean, Sting knew, I kind of
Speaker 1: knew that Sting didn't really want to do The Police again,
Speaker 1: especially when his solo career had happened. Um, what did
Speaker 1: I want to go out and announce it? No? Okay?
Speaker 1: What's the thrill for you in the process? Is that
Speaker 1: the music itself is the marketing, is the ride? What
Speaker 1: turns you on? And how's you doing this? I don't
Speaker 1: know that I would put my finger on one thing,
Speaker 1: but there is a kind of a thrill in taking
Speaker 1: something that everybody says is a loser and making it
Speaker 1: a huge winner. There's there's a lot of fun in
Speaker 1: that in a way. It's but but then again, that
Speaker 1: make it seem like I'm saying, well, I want to
Speaker 1: go out and say I told you so. Well, It's
Speaker 1: it's not really that. There is a kind of a thrill,
Speaker 1: you know when I when I when we did The
Speaker 1: Police and UH at a London show and I hired
Speaker 1: a half track to drive us. We we did an
Speaker 1: opening show with Hammerson palis Amage with Odian for three
Speaker 1: thousand people, the right upmarket, cool venue across the street.
Speaker 1: We decided we go a little more punky with a
Speaker 1: stand up venue called the Hammersmonth Palais. I figured, well,
Speaker 1: you know, to get across the intersection. We should have
Speaker 1: some kind of cool image. Let's let's get an army
Speaker 1: hat track and we'll put the band in the back
Speaker 1: of it. We'll drive across the street and look kind
Speaker 1: of cool in the photographs. Of course, when we went
Speaker 1: out of backstage and we got in the hat track
Speaker 1: and we drove out in the intersection, it was complete bedroom.
Speaker 1: There were thousands of people are Luckily I had hired
Speaker 1: a hat track, and we couldn't have got across the street,
Speaker 1: you know, because there were thousands of fans and they're
Speaker 1: all screaming and yelling and wanting to get a piece
Speaker 1: of the police, you know, And that was thrilling, you know,
Speaker 1: to see people just were going crazy for something you had,
Speaker 1: you were helping making happen. That was great, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, there were there were other times, like I
Speaker 1: was invited to be to give the keynote speech at
Speaker 1: the New New Music Seminar in New York. And the
Speaker 1: first couple of ones had a big, kind of small
Speaker 1: three or four hundred people. But this was one that
Speaker 1: which I had heard it was gonna be kind of big,
Speaker 1: and there was like three thousand people there and I've
Speaker 1: brought out. It was at the Hilton Hotel in New York,
Speaker 1: and I came came out to do my speech and
Speaker 1: looking out at a bank of people, of three thousands
Speaker 1: of people, thinking, wow, you know this is big. You know,
Speaker 1: I knew my speech. I walk off the stage and
Speaker 1: I'm I'm walking to the side of the door, and
Speaker 1: this girl comes up to me with a tape in
Speaker 1: her hand and looks at me and say uh, and
Speaker 1: she fainted right in front of me. I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: my first in it was that I didn't touch her.
Speaker 1: I didn't touch her, you know, like she fainted. And
Speaker 1: I realized after she and she was coming so close
Speaker 1: to the person that she thought, by some magic could
Speaker 1: make her a big superstar. You know, she had her
Speaker 1: tape in her hand. She just fainted right in front
Speaker 1: of me. You know, she was so overcome to be
Speaker 1: into my presence. You know, that was a shock. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm just some guy, you know, and here's this girl
Speaker 1: fainting in front of me, you know. And I remember
Speaker 1: um sort of a similar experience. You know, when I
Speaker 1: went out to introduce the police at Shade Stadium. You know,
Speaker 1: eighty thousand people as me even a bit more, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, I'm doing the introduction. So I walked out
Speaker 1: on stage and the minute I walk out, flash bulbs everywhere.
Speaker 1: The place was electric. That was screams, and I got
Speaker 1: ladies and gentleman this time, and the place went the
Speaker 1: zirk that at the roar of the crowd. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was so powerful. I did my introduction and walking
Speaker 1: up the stage and I was shaking with it, just
Speaker 1: the energy of it, you know, And I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: oh my god, look what it's done to me. I
Speaker 1: was on stage for a minute. Those guys are gonna
Speaker 1: be out there for an hour and a half. What's
Speaker 1: it gonna do to them? And you know, something people
Speaker 1: forget is that they went out there and they were
Speaker 1: dealing with I mean, people fainting and people going crazy,
Speaker 1: and I mean just the mediac this of it. It
Speaker 1: was unbelievable. I mean one of one of the funny
Speaker 1: stories that at that show, you know, everybody was showing
Speaker 1: get on stage, and at one point the security guy
Speaker 1: asked me if I could stay by the stairs because
Speaker 1: everybody is trying to get up, and he was like
Speaker 1: losing losing it, you know, And I said okay, I'll stop.
Speaker 1: So overcomes the manager of Joan Jett, who has been
Speaker 1: one of the opening acts, and a big burly guys
Speaker 1: coming right behind him, you know. And the manager comes out.
Speaker 1: But I know what he's gonna ask. You said, Miles,
Speaker 1: you know, do me a favor. You know, Joan Jets
Speaker 1: here with her mother, and you know our parents can
Speaker 1: can you put them on stage? And I said, look
Speaker 1: at the fire marshals up there right now, everybody and
Speaker 1: their mother. The police have got all there. I don't
Speaker 1: know what I know. If I put anybody else up there,
Speaker 1: they're gonna close the whole show down, you know. And
Speaker 1: he says, I understand, I understand, you know, but anything
Speaker 1: you can do. And I said, believe me, I'll do
Speaker 1: what I can. You know. He walks off. This big
Speaker 1: burly bouncer comes up and goes takes my hand and
Speaker 1: sort of, I know, Mr Copeland, I know what you're
Speaker 1: gonna do. What you're gonna do, right and I and
Speaker 1: he takes his hand and walks to and I look,
Speaker 1: there's a twenty dollar bill in my hand. The guy
Speaker 1: at timpt me. But to what Joe Jett other stage
Speaker 1: with what bucks? You know, so I go backstage the band.
Speaker 1: I say, guys, you will not believe what just happened.
Speaker 1: I'm going back to get them to bring them out
Speaker 1: on stage, you know. And I said, they said what
Speaker 1: I said? I said, Joe Jet's magic came up with
Speaker 1: some bouncer comes up. I just got tipped twenty bucks
Speaker 1: for putting somebody on stage. So Andy Summers said up
Speaker 1: to me and says, okay, give us our share. So
Speaker 1: I have to give up five bucks this big bid
Speaker 1: the Stewarts five to Andy, and I get five bucks,
Speaker 1: you know. So they were and they're looking at it, going,
Speaker 1: that's great, we just make five bucks with the show,
Speaker 1: and out they walked, you know. Okay. Traditionally or not traditionally,
Speaker 1: but a great number of managers end up going inside
Speaker 1: two labels. Were you ever offered the gig? Where you
Speaker 1: ever tempted you want? Did you want that? No? Not really?
Speaker 1: I mean I R S was my label. So in
Speaker 1: the way I had I was inside. I was inside
Speaker 1: E M I because we sold I R S, D
Speaker 1: M I, and so I became I was part. I
Speaker 1: realized what the corporate world was was once a year
Speaker 1: they would bring all the label heads together you know,
Speaker 1: they would have you know, Chris Lists and capital and whatever.
Speaker 1: We would all have to do our presentation for the year.
Speaker 1: And my I was very good friends with the head
Speaker 1: guy at E M I, who was the guy named
Speaker 1: Jim five Field. And after the presentation and we'd all
Speaker 1: all good art you know, talking about acts and all that,
Speaker 1: he would leave the room and the accountants would come
Speaker 1: in and they say, Okay, your target this year is X.
Speaker 1: You make that number, you get your Christmas bonus. I
Speaker 1: don't care how you do it. You can fire everybody
Speaker 1: and cut your overhead or you're gonna have a hit record,
Speaker 1: don't care. That's whatever you gotta make. You make that number,
Speaker 1: you get your Christmas bonus. You don't like that number,
Speaker 1: you don't get squatted. And we're sitting there at the
Speaker 1: end of the thing thinking, you know, what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? Well, of course you gotta figure some way
Speaker 1: to get your Christmas bonus because that's all you're gonna
Speaker 1: make that year, you know. So that's the corporate world.
Speaker 1: You know, this whole idea about you know, artists label.
Speaker 1: You know they care about the artists and the music
Speaker 1: and the art nonsense. Wait till the accounts walk in
Speaker 1: their own it's the numbers, it's the share value. And
Speaker 1: that was a world that I was really not going
Speaker 1: to function well in. Now. J Boulberg, who by this
Speaker 1: time and you know who was was with me in
Speaker 1: the label there. You know, I said to him at
Speaker 1: the end of it, I said, look, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna last year very long. And I'll bet you
Speaker 1: knowing you am I either as I R S. They're
Speaker 1: gonna close down Chrysalis, They're gonna close down I R S,
Speaker 1: They're gonna close down Version, They're gonna close down these labels.
Speaker 1: Why would they want so many labels? If I were you,
Speaker 1: you're a lot younger than I am. You you know
Speaker 1: your way around these companies. If I were you, I'd
Speaker 1: go out and look for a job right now before
Speaker 1: they fire you, because you know, no one's gonna hire me.
Speaker 1: They're gonna think, why would Miles take this job? He's
Speaker 1: managing Sting and making all that money with stinging the
Speaker 1: police and they have all this They imagine I'm doing
Speaker 1: all this great stuff, you know, where Shay was just
Speaker 1: working for I R S. You know, so I said, Jay,
Speaker 1: do yourself a favor, Go get yourself a job while
Speaker 1: you have a job, And I think he was kind
Speaker 1: of upset about it, but sure enough he takes my
Speaker 1: advice and he goes off, and a few months later
Speaker 1: he ends up as president of MCA Records. And of course,
Speaker 1: of course, a year later, what happens. The university closes
Speaker 1: MCA Records, and he's that of a job, right, but
Speaker 1: he survives. The history of the music business is littered
Speaker 1: with people who had great fortunes and blew them. What
Speaker 1: happened with all your money? Well, I if I could
Speaker 1: go back and do it over again, I'd have more
Speaker 1: money than I have now, for sure. You know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I did blow money on things I shouldn't have done
Speaker 1: it on, you know, But thankfully I did do enough
Speaker 1: stuff that made money. When I sold IRIS Records, I
Speaker 1: made money. You know. I bought a place in a
Speaker 1: big about a castle in France, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: you know, which is appreciated in value. You know, I
Speaker 1: have my royalties from the police. You know, I do
Speaker 1: have money, but I'm not. I'm not flushed like I
Speaker 1: used to be. I wouldn't walk around and say, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a billionaire or whatever. You know, But I'm living
Speaker 1: in Fine, you know, and a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with the fact that, you know, I'm getting
Speaker 1: rewarded four things that I did years ago, just like
Speaker 1: Sting is, and just like Andy and Stewart are you know,
Speaker 1: we all got our royalties to things we did thirty
Speaker 1: years ago. Uh, And I think that's right, you know,
Speaker 1: we should, you know, because you know, I went through
Speaker 1: a lot of sacrifice, just like Andy Somers did, and
Speaker 1: Stewart and Sting, and we all sacrificed to get what
Speaker 1: we we have, and some made more than others. Of course,
Speaker 1: Sting made up like a bandit, and uh, thankfully he
Speaker 1: wrote great songs and he deserves every penny he's got.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the great artists do you know.
Speaker 1: But sure there are those that blew their money. Um,
Speaker 1: and thankfully I was not one that blew all mine.
Speaker 1: So once keeping you busy now other than writing your memoir, well,
Speaker 1: actually writing the memoer was was quite interesting. But I'm
Speaker 1: very interested in politics and what's going on today. I'm looking,
Speaker 1: you know, with kind of fear at what's going on
Speaker 1: in America. And but you know, I'm having grown up
Speaker 1: one of the you know, you asked very early on,
Speaker 1: you know, what was it like, you know, growing up
Speaker 1: in the Middle East. Well, one of the things that
Speaker 1: does get into your mind is, you know, what's the
Speaker 1: position of America in the world, and what is the
Speaker 1: politics of the world. So politics is very much a
Speaker 1: part of what you live and grow up in and
Speaker 1: places like Lebanon and whatever. You know, And uh, I
Speaker 1: can't help but remain interested in politics and what's happening
Speaker 1: with the country and where the future goes. And um,
Speaker 1: that's something that you know, I'm I watched stev every day,
Speaker 1: just like Donald Trump does, you know, wanting to see
Speaker 1: what crazy stuff is happening. You know. But I'm also
Speaker 1: working with guitar players, so I always liked they work
Speaker 1: with Steve i, Umnodle, Bettencourt, Zach wild Y, Moustein, I
Speaker 1: worked with Kenny Waite, Shepard, you know, guitarists. I really
Speaker 1: loved the guitar and what the guitar does. Um, and
Speaker 1: I love I love musicianship and stuff. I still listen
Speaker 1: to records, you know, I still listen to a lot
Speaker 1: of Middle Eastern stuff. As a matter of fact, I'm
Speaker 1: not married to one particular kind of music, but I'm
Speaker 1: interested in what's going on in the world, you know,
Speaker 1: and the human predicament, you know, I'm interested. I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here in California looking out it as you must be
Speaker 1: looking out at smoke, you know, uh, the environment, you know,
Speaker 1: Where where am I? What are my kids going to
Speaker 1: grow up to be in twenty years, you know, and
Speaker 1: what's the world gonna be? So I think none of
Speaker 1: us can escape from that fact. Um So I would
Speaker 1: say my my vision now has become I mean it's
Speaker 1: always been sort of slightly political, but much more so
Speaker 1: now than it has been in the past. So, needless
Speaker 1: to say, the music business has gone through a tumultuous
Speaker 1: change in the twenty first century. And I would also say,
Speaker 1: as someone who's been around in the era where you
Speaker 1: had your heyday, music drove the culture in a way
Speaker 1: it does not today and is not quite as important,
Speaker 1: even though they're big acts, etcetera. What do you think
Speaker 1: about music's place in the overall culture today and what
Speaker 1: do you think about today's music business this Well, I'd
Speaker 1: say the music business has changed a lot. But you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago I sat with Jay Boberg,
Speaker 1: who was actually had had gotten the was running a
Speaker 1: chairman of a company that was doing digital stuff. So
Speaker 1: I asked him, I said, you know, what, what do
Speaker 1: you think, you know, with the Spotify and the world
Speaker 1: of digital and does that mean that all the royalties
Speaker 1: that I'm getting from the police and the old stuff
Speaker 1: that I did over the years, you know, that means
Speaker 1: he's gonna be dissopated. And he said, well no, he said,
Speaker 1: just the opposite. And I said, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1: He said, well, you know, he said, what's really happened,
Speaker 1: he said, is that now even though you're not making
Speaker 1: a lot per play, you're talking billions. So he said, remember,
Speaker 1: you know, you go back twenty years, were we ever
Speaker 1: making money out of Africa? No, it was all piracy
Speaker 1: and you know you'd never get a royalty check from
Speaker 1: anywhere in Africa. He said, Now, if somebody wants music
Speaker 1: and gabon or what you know, pick pick a country.
Speaker 1: You know, Molly, you know they have their phone and
Speaker 1: they want music, Well they can get it on their phone,
Speaker 1: even if they're paying two cents a song. You know,
Speaker 1: at least it's something. So he said, now we're actually
Speaker 1: getting royalty east from Africa. So he said, multiplied Spotify,
Speaker 1: where you know, two or three years ago, maybe you
Speaker 1: were getting point zero zero zero one cent a song
Speaker 1: play multiple times ten billion. Now you're talking real money. So,
Speaker 1: he said, the likelihood is, even though the record business
Speaker 1: went into a huge slum when the Satisfy and and
Speaker 1: the Spotify, a lot of these digital platforms were starting,
Speaker 1: obvious is I think the arc is gonna go back
Speaker 1: up again, where those royalty streams will now be meaningful
Speaker 1: because there's just so many people on it. And he said,
Speaker 1: the funny thing about the youth today is the figure
Speaker 1: it out. Paying nine bucks a month to listen to
Speaker 1: whatever you want, whenever you want it is a great deal.
Speaker 1: It's a lot better deal than in the past, where
Speaker 1: once a month you get to buy one record for
Speaker 1: fifteen bucks and you only get to hear that one record.
Speaker 1: You know, you own the record, he said. But you know,
Speaker 1: nine bucks a month, for ten bucks a month, whatever
Speaker 1: it is to get spotifyces you own everything all the time.
Speaker 1: He said, that's a great deal. It's a lot cheaper
Speaker 1: for the average kid then buying one record a month.
Speaker 1: You know, So, he said, when you think about it
Speaker 1: that way, he said, the whole generation of this thinking
Speaker 1: of things in a different way. And you know, you
Speaker 1: look at things like Uber and also you know a
Speaker 1: lot of other businesses they're really thinking, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: owning something doesn't have quite the same fields it used
Speaker 1: to owning a car. Why, you know, with all the
Speaker 1: you know, you gotta buy tires, you gotta you getta
Speaker 1: license it, you gotta you know, have repairs, you gotta
Speaker 1: buy gash you got well, you know, Uber is pretty easy.
Speaker 1: You know. So a lot of those sort of ways
Speaker 1: of thinking, you know, uh, that ownership as a way
Speaker 1: that you used to influence my generation or your generation,
Speaker 1: they now think of in a different way. And will
Speaker 1: that change everything in the future? Will maybe? So you know, um,
Speaker 1: I think that in terms of you know, what I
Speaker 1: said to him was the time to start a record label?
Speaker 1: He said, Well, no, he said, because the problem is,
Speaker 1: by the time you build up enough of a catalog
Speaker 1: to make any money, you spent so much money doing
Speaker 1: it that you'll never make it back again. So the
Speaker 1: way to make money is do what universal did you buy?
Speaker 1: E M I. They've already got the catalog you spent.
Speaker 1: You buy it for three or four million dollars billion.
Speaker 1: You fire everybody. Now, all that money goes straight into
Speaker 1: your system, which is already set up digitally cause you
Speaker 1: maybe a few more people, and all that money just
Speaker 1: flows in with no cost to it. Whereas E M
Speaker 1: I had all the costs. Now they've got none. They
Speaker 1: got no rent, they got no pressing, and they got
Speaker 1: no nothing. You just clashed in. So universal now is
Speaker 1: making doing phenomenally well because they lost all the they
Speaker 1: have E M I, but with no cost to me.
Speaker 1: Am I. Well, Miles, this has been wonderful. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your insight in your history. You're certainly
Speaker 1: one of a kind. Thanks for doing this. Happy to
Speaker 1: be here until next time. This is Bob Left sense