Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Lessner's Podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest today is the one and only Simon Napier Bell, writer, producer, manager, author,
Speaker 1: jack of all trades. Simon, good to have you on
Speaker 1: the podcast.
Speaker 2: You missed a filmmaker for ten years. That's all I've
Speaker 2: been doing. Actually I almost.
Speaker 1: Put that in one I'm talking, but we'll talk about that.
Speaker 1: You live in Thailand. Why do you live in Thailand?
Speaker 2: It's very central, you know, I work in UK and
Speaker 2: Australia and China and America. Look at the map, find
Speaker 2: a central point and you'll low to be in Thailand
Speaker 2: or Hong Kong or Singapore. You know, it's it's twelve
Speaker 2: hours to LA but it's twelve hours to London, twelve
Speaker 2: hours to Aucklands and New Zealand. And it's warm, comfortable.
Speaker 2: I love being in La without without February, without without
Speaker 2: Decembine over February.
Speaker 1: It's okay, you have to give me a little more.
Speaker 1: Was it love? Was it money?
Speaker 2: I'm sure you know my husband, my boyfriend husband is tied.
Speaker 2: Now you've got to You've got a choice. When when
Speaker 2: you live with somebody you have lived in their country.
Speaker 2: I live in your country. I mean, that's the sensible
Speaker 2: choice choice. If I sudden, Spain would be nice if
Speaker 2: I'd met a Spanish guy, but I didn't. I met
Speaker 2: a tiger. We lived in England for five or six years.
Speaker 2: It was good, but we had we kept a place
Speaker 2: in Thailand, and eventually, eventually, whenever there was any free time,
Speaker 2: I'd be in Thailand because it's warmer or pleasant, nicer,
Speaker 2: And and then you'd have a holiday and you said
Speaker 2: we'd better go to England to make sure the place
Speaker 2: is okay. And you think that's not no longer to
Speaker 2: start a place as the liability, you know, So we
Speaker 2: got rid of that, and I would say, I'm here
Speaker 2: three months a year. I mean, I just got back
Speaker 2: yesterday from Indonesia. Five days week after next to be
Speaker 2: back in London making films. I'm traveling the whole time, okay.
Speaker 1: So if you're entirely in three months a year, are
Speaker 1: you anywhere else for that amount of time?
Speaker 2: Maybe the UK wouldn't come to that, but it would
Speaker 2: be the next most I do. All of I make
Speaker 2: films that I'm mainly in the UK. But then nowadays
Speaker 2: the filming is literally only the filming I mean you
Speaker 2: go to the UK, you got to interview people. You
Speaker 2: may talk to the editor. You don't even need to
Speaker 2: do that there. It is just when you're interviewing people
Speaker 2: on the film. So the UK is probably kept down
Speaker 2: to six weeks. Even have I making two films a
Speaker 2: year America very little. I come often, but not for
Speaker 2: a long time. I have a show running in Las
Speaker 2: Vegas who's been going for ten years, Raging the Rockcord.
Speaker 2: So I look in to make sure it's going. Okay.
Speaker 2: Well I know it's going okay. I don't look into
Speaker 2: make sure it's going. I looking because I like looking
Speaker 2: in and to remind them I exist. Forget it, but
Speaker 2: I'm part of it. And China, well that was a
Speaker 2: lot before COVID. It faded away. It's just beginning to
Speaker 2: come back again now.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you dropped. I mean, Americans are really ethnocentric.
Speaker 1: You draft the average American or English speaking person in Thailand,
Speaker 1: whether they feel it's comfortable or whether they say, wow,
Speaker 1: this is completely different.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. You see a lot of these things on
Speaker 2: TikTok and people say, oh god, this is so amazing
Speaker 2: and different. You've never been to a place like this,
Speaker 2: and other people say, it just feels comfortable. This is
Speaker 2: where your background is. America is very easy to generalize
Speaker 2: about Americans, and I often do, which is unfair. Now
Speaker 2: go for it, But you're so completely culturally different, you know. Well,
Speaker 2: the first time I ever went to America, I was
Speaker 2: I was eighteen, nineteen twenty out. We press a position
Speaker 2: and I get a up and hitchhiked around America. And
Speaker 2: I was brought up in an upper meddy class English family,
Speaker 2: but my father had been a member of the Communist Party.
Speaker 2: This is the diverse peculiarity you get in the upper
Speaker 2: middle class in British. He went to Oxford University and
Speaker 2: joined the Communist Party. He wanted to fight for the underdog.
Speaker 2: So I was brought up to the upper middle class,
Speaker 2: left wing, very left wing, atheist, very much part of
Speaker 2: my culture. Not to believe I was color prejudice. I
Speaker 2: preferred duck skinned people. I preferred anybody who could possibly
Speaker 2: be prejudiced against. You know, they would immediately go up
Speaker 2: in my estimation. I'd feel safe, for more comfortable with
Speaker 2: people who were not white, middle class. They were people
Speaker 2: I was uncomfortable with. And I went to America and
Speaker 2: I was I'd been pre trained to not like Republican Christians.
Speaker 2: This is the essence of what was wrong with America.
Speaker 2: And I hit track around America, and everywhere I went,
Speaker 2: I'd find really kind, nice, generous, humorous, well educated people
Speaker 2: who would invite me home for the weekend and say, oh,
Speaker 2: why you hitchhiking? Come home, spent a couple of days
Speaker 2: of the family. And there were always white Republican Christians,
Speaker 2: the nicest you can be. And I hated that because
Speaker 2: it maybe have to think new things too complicated.
Speaker 1: Since we're going that far and you live halfway around
Speaker 1: the world, what is the assessment of the political condition
Speaker 1: in the United States from afar?
Speaker 2: Well, the one thing many Americans, I think most Americans
Speaker 2: don't understand you do because you're hugely cosmopolitan, you're traveling,
Speaker 2: you talk with people, is America's president. As the world's president,
Speaker 2: we're all in your hands. And it is absolutely no
Speaker 2: good thinking in an isolated way that other people don't
Speaker 2: care about your president. And you know, it's a stugget
Speaker 2: staggering to us that fifty percent of America doesn't understand
Speaker 2: that the entire world doesn't just like Trump. They just
Speaker 2: think it's incredible. A man who should probably be in
Speaker 2: an old people's home, probably is a criminal, may not be,
Speaker 2: that's probably mentally disadvantage in his entire life. That don't
Speaker 2: mean recently it could be president and then having men
Speaker 2: PRIs that you'd wanted president again, it's it doesn't it doesn't.
Speaker 2: It doesn't bode well for America in general or for
Speaker 2: the world in general. And Americans failed to understand that
Speaker 2: you you it's not your matter in taking a leadership
Speaker 2: you you are in a leadership position, whether you want
Speaker 2: it or not. So it's very difficult for the rest
Speaker 2: of the world to respect America when when fifty percent
Speaker 2: may vor for Trump, hopefully not three weeks, we will
Speaker 2: go back to respecting them because you'll come to your senses.
Speaker 1: Just because we're this far. What's your assessment of the
Speaker 1: UK Brexit labor Tories.
Speaker 2: Well, brexits most of pouring stupid thing which ever happened,
Speaker 2: but they again a great look. Where did I see this?
Speaker 2: A man phoned up a talk show and he was
Speaker 2: planning that the talk show host had aligned British by
Speaker 2: saying half the people in England behalf below average intelligence. Well,
Speaker 2: half the people in Britain do have a low average intelligence,
Speaker 2: as they do everywhere else in the world, and it's
Speaker 2: always a pity when they can be swayed and rerex
Speaker 2: It was just an insane thing to do, utterly, totally insane,
Speaker 2: and pretty even the people who voted for it now
Speaker 2: pretty well know it was and slowly, slowly will edge
Speaker 2: back into being part of Europe.
Speaker 1: So tell me about this show in Vegas.
Speaker 2: It was a great idea. I had it typical of
Speaker 2: my NonStop travel. I was sitting in the Purple Haze
Speaker 2: Rock club in Bangalore about one in the morning, the
Speaker 2: end of a very nice bottle of champagne. IM sitting alone,
Speaker 2: and I've been listening to the DJ players endless stream
Speaker 2: of records and by you mustn't counter culturists. Sometimes in
Speaker 2: life you sit there amazingly every time one of your
Speaker 2: favorite rock records finishes exactly the one you would have
Speaker 2: chosen to put the covers off, and you think, God,
Speaker 2: this DJ, he's wired. We're in a word to each other.
Speaker 2: I've got to go and thank him. So I got
Speaker 2: up to go for a pe. As I got up
Speaker 2: to go to be I looked across to the DJ,
Speaker 2: who I was going to go across and thank him
Speaker 2: for having such exquisite taste, and it was a covers band.
Speaker 2: Now I was a bit pissed. I'm sure, Champagne, but
Speaker 2: you are meant to know the difference between covers and records,
Speaker 2: especially if you've been in the business or in your life.
Speaker 2: So when I got back and sat down, I pondered
Speaker 2: on this. It was one of those incredibly clever Filipino bands.
Speaker 2: You can play hugely loud feedback at just incredibly quiet levels,
Speaker 2: and you know that they know they know how to
Speaker 2: do all these things. And I sat down and I thought,
Speaker 2: do you know what's missing in the world is great?
Speaker 2: It's two hours of all your favorite rock played by
Speaker 2: the greatest rock positions in the world. It's just never
Speaker 2: been done. There are tribute bands, but they're not the
Speaker 2: greatest rock positions. And so I got this idea. We
Speaker 2: would have a show where every one of the greatest
Speaker 2: rock positions who are not that minute on tour would
Speaker 2: their band would form a band. And we have fifty
Speaker 2: musicians and they are all top positions from top groups,
Speaker 2: and tenor and leven are in the band at any
Speaker 2: one time. You know, if we had Doug old Ritch
Speaker 2: are a long time White State would go on tour.
Speaker 2: So Doug would have to go on tour, and Tracy
Speaker 2: Gunns would come in and traveling McDonald on base and
Speaker 2: Jovia go on tour, and so we have this absolutely incredible,
Speaker 2: top notch rock group playing everybody's favorite rocksms, including theirs.
Speaker 2: Because this was the interesting thing to begin with, I
Speaker 2: thought they won't want to do this, and then they
Speaker 2: took Tracy guns who took me aside one and said,
Speaker 2: I've You've given me a chance to play all the
Speaker 2: songs I ever wanted to play. He said, if you're
Speaker 2: a La Guns or White Snake, you can't go play
Speaker 2: any Rolling Stone songs. You know you don't want to
Speaker 2: let you. But my favorite songs too, like there everybody
Speaker 2: else's and now we can play them. And so it's
Speaker 2: amazing two hours every night of everybody's favorite music played
Speaker 2: as well as it can be possibly played. And we
Speaker 2: often have visiting rock stars. You're come in and listen them,
Speaker 2: they're amazed.
Speaker 1: But where does this play.
Speaker 2: At the moment? Is that the hard Rock Cafe. It's
Speaker 2: been at four different venues. We opened originally in what
Speaker 2: was the less Long Hill, you know where Elvison everybody
Speaker 2: had played, and then we moved to the Tropicana and
Speaker 2: then the hard Rock Hotel and that closed and somewhere
Speaker 2: else or on our fifth venue ten years, ten years continuously.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so what are the economics? How many shows
Speaker 1: a week?
Speaker 2: We're doing four shows a week. We started. We were
Speaker 2: very we started, and we were Harry Carl, my partner,
Speaker 2: and a couple of no old British managers. People gave
Speaker 2: us lots of advice and we didn't take it, which
Speaker 2: is good. That's what you have to do that you
Speaker 2: don't want to take too much advice. Mistakes are lovely.
Speaker 2: But everybody said, you know, you need a couple of
Speaker 2: million in the reserved or the show in Vegas. You
Speaker 2: can't sell any tickets the first six months, and we said,
Speaker 2: yeah we will, We've got this amazing show over the company.
Speaker 2: What we had is, you can't because everybody books their
Speaker 2: holiday in Vegas six months ahead, and they booked the
Speaker 2: tickets for the shows they're going to see. So when
Speaker 2: they get to Vegas, even if they want to see
Speaker 2: your show, they're already booked up with other tickets. So
Speaker 2: your first six months are horrific. You've got to fill
Speaker 2: the show because if you don't fill it, everybody knows
Speaker 2: it's a failure. And to fill it you have to pay.
Speaker 2: It's not like giving away ten seats a night. You're
Speaker 2: giving away eight hundred seats a night and you want
Speaker 2: people to fill them. So you end up paying a
Speaker 2: corporation companies who do this, This is how they make
Speaker 2: their money. They'll fill your seats for you, and so
Speaker 2: you pay for those seats to be filled. So for
Speaker 2: at the end of six months, we had a good
Speaker 2: big debt, a couple of million dollars debt, the amount
Speaker 2: of money we were told we should have had to
Speaker 2: start with. But bit by bit by bit, it's been
Speaker 2: ten years now it's come round to being a very
Speaker 2: very successful shodow and the debts got paid off and
Speaker 2: it's making money and it's full every night.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if what is the deal with the hotel?
Speaker 2: Uh, the deal with the hotel printing as much we have,
Speaker 2: we get, we get the space, and we have to
Speaker 2: make the show profitable. That's everywhere in Vegas. Hotels are
Speaker 2: not they're not entrepreneurs, they're not promoters. They give you
Speaker 2: the space you've got to run your show and make
Speaker 2: it profitable.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's assume it is profitable. They get a cut.
Speaker 2: This is how you cut the deal. Normally they get
Speaker 2: a cup, but not always. Some of them are really
Speaker 2: happy just to have the bar continually full. You know
Speaker 2: that the bar from a rock show is good money.
Speaker 2: And at the Tropicana, for instance, I mean they'd never sold,
Speaker 2: they'd never sold made so much from the bar as
Speaker 2: they did with our show, and then they change it
Speaker 2: for like a strip show, a girly show that was
Speaker 2: full every night too, but nobody went and rank. You know,
Speaker 2: rock fans strength lot. So everybody makes different deals for
Speaker 2: different reasons. But basically, you are going to have to
Speaker 2: find your own way of making a profit out of
Speaker 2: the show from the room they give you.
Speaker 1: Okay, so all the ticket revenue goes to the producer
Speaker 1: of the show.
Speaker 2: That's never the case anywhere with anything. That are people
Speaker 2: who sell tickets.
Speaker 1: Well that's why I'm asking. I know some stuff about Vegas,
Speaker 1: but I'm talking to somebody else. I'll let you tell
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know the current dealing. Follow my partner
Speaker 2: made the deal and he would know. But if you
Speaker 2: when you say all that to get money, if you
Speaker 2: mean what you get after the ticket agency has taken
Speaker 2: their percentages. Yeah, yeah, pretty well, yeah, pretty well?
Speaker 1: Okay, So would you open another show in Vegas? Are
Speaker 1: one and done?
Speaker 2: We had Raiding a Rock Vault was followed by Rating
Speaker 2: a Country Book, which we did in Branson, Missouri. Again
Speaker 2: it was very successful. But Harry, my partner, runs it.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We had the concept together, we put
Speaker 2: it on together, and then he was abow decided to
Speaker 2: live there and run it. He found going to Branson
Speaker 2: back to Vegas every week, just you know. He did
Speaker 2: it for two years. It was just killing and so
Speaker 2: we stopped that show and we probably will reopen it
Speaker 2: in Vegas at some stage. But Vegas isn't good on
Speaker 2: studying country music, and we are going to Raiding the
Speaker 2: Latin Vault, which we've had a great demand for. So
Speaker 2: we may do two shows in the same venue, alternating nights.
Speaker 2: So we may have two different venues doing two different shows.
Speaker 1: So if you're doing four shows a night, what's in
Speaker 1: the theater the other night?
Speaker 2: Four shows? Four shows a week? Do you know? It varies?
Speaker 2: Sometimes sometimes there's nothing, Sometimes there just incoming one night shows.
Speaker 2: There have been nights I noticed I've noticed groups coming
Speaker 2: in and playing one night. It's a hard rock cafe,
Speaker 2: so they they've got groups coming in, but it's not
Speaker 2: a constant. They'll be changing what's on each night.
Speaker 1: Okay, where is your residence for taxes? And what are
Speaker 1: the tax implications being a citizen of the world.
Speaker 2: You mean for me, not that show that shows that
Speaker 2: number that shows an American show. For me a complex.
Speaker 2: I'm a non resident brit which means that I have
Speaker 2: If I earn money in Britain, I have to pay
Speaker 2: tax on it. But I've earned money outside of Britain,
Speaker 2: I don't have to pay tax, unlike Americans who have
Speaker 2: to pay American tax of money they earned in any country.
Speaker 2: So if I earn money here in Asia, or if
Speaker 2: I earn money anyway which is paid to me through
Speaker 2: an Asian company or even direct to me, I'm not
Speaker 2: liable for UK tax on that. But a lot of
Speaker 2: money I owned the UK because I have a corporation
Speaker 2: in the UK. That's really the biggest source of income.
Speaker 2: I didn't when I first moved here. I thought I
Speaker 2: have a corporation here and keep on my income out
Speaker 2: of the UK, but it's difficult. People want to work
Speaker 2: with the UK company. It's comfortable. Bank transfers go through easily,
Speaker 2: and so in many ways, I don't really have much
Speaker 2: tax money from being here. I'm pretty much paying UK tax,
Speaker 2: but it's my choice. And if I do want to
Speaker 2: make independent financial deals here with myself as a consultant,
Speaker 2: when I work as a consultant, which I do quite often,
Speaker 2: I get that paid directly to Thailand and then I
Speaker 2: don't have to pay tax in the UK. If I
Speaker 2: bring too much into Thailand, I would then have to
Speaker 2: pay tax on that. But I have the advantage that
Speaker 2: I'm old, and therefore Thailand sees me. It gives me.
Speaker 2: I live here on a retirement visa, not at work visa,
Speaker 2: and they want retired people to bring money in, so
Speaker 2: they don't question much what money I'm bringing. I'm retired,
Speaker 2: That's what they like. Old rich retired people bring in money.
Speaker 1: But there is tax to the country of Thailand.
Speaker 2: There is if I do the work in Thailand, but
Speaker 2: I'm not doing any right. I've stayed really clear of
Speaker 2: working in Thailand because that does bring up another thing.
Speaker 2: Then I'm going to be subject to their tax and
Speaker 2: I mean that's not I'm trying to avoid tax so much.
Speaker 2: It's just another complication, another set of falls, another to
Speaker 2: muddle up your life, you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, As a result of streaming, it is much more
Speaker 1: a worldwide business than ever before. And it's not dominated
Speaker 1: I'm talking about music here, not dominated by American acts.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about movies. For a long time, big business
Speaker 1: for Hollywood was export in China. Now it's more domestic
Speaker 1: pictures in the rest of the world. Asia is your
Speaker 1: area of focus. What do Americans in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world not understand about what's going on in the
Speaker 1: entertainment business.
Speaker 2: Americans understand less than Europeans, that's for sure. Though in China.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you talk to people in the film
Speaker 2: industry in America about China, of course they understand because
Speaker 2: they got so close, they got so involved for a while.
Speaker 2: They know to make a movie of success in China,
Speaker 2: they have to have they have to bring in a
Speaker 2: Chinese co producer or associate producer to consult with to
Speaker 2: get the thing right. They've did that a lot. Two
Speaker 2: or three years ago, they were doing it in every movie.
Speaker 2: Now there's rather started to say let's forget Chinese market
Speaker 2: for the moment, but you can't. It's vast. I mean,
Speaker 2: the Chinese market alone will pay for your film. And
Speaker 2: it's more looking the other way around. Can we fathom
Speaker 2: what the Chinese really want from the American market? And
Speaker 2: you know, if the economies are so huge and so
Speaker 2: hopelessly interweld, it's ridiculous to think of Chinese as an enemy.
Speaker 2: I know, it's the American way. You know, you're either
Speaker 2: you're other part of us, or we're fighting with you.
Speaker 2: But and there's it's always extraordinary in that you read
Speaker 2: about the animosity between two countries, and you know the
Speaker 2: violent disagreement about this and that, And also you're going
Speaker 2: to find there are committees and people working between the
Speaker 2: two countries very amicably and sensibly at exactly the same time.
Speaker 2: And there's no doubt at all in my mind, I
Speaker 2: don't have any fear at all. And there's been some
Speaker 2: ultimate American Chinese conflict. You're intertwined enough with each other
Speaker 2: in all in every aspect of all industries, manufacturing industries,
Speaker 2: but essentially more important anything in the entertainment industry, that
Speaker 2: you have to stay involved. And if you're intertwined in
Speaker 2: the entertainment industry. You have a cross culturalization going on
Speaker 2: the whole time. You understand each other better and better.
Speaker 2: And I would say, you know, I still go to
Speaker 2: China quite a lot, and it's increasing. Again. The problems
Speaker 2: are over Chinese young people, even though they're pretty well
Speaker 2: prevented from accessing Google and all the American ways of
Speaker 2: finding out what's going on, they're very offa with what's
Speaker 2: going on in America. They understand American culture very much
Speaker 2: better than American kids understand Asian culture.
Speaker 1: This may be a little bit off your radar, but
Speaker 1: there's a burgeoning electric car business in China. They recently
Speaker 1: went into in Indonesia and own the market. You know,
Speaker 1: there's taxes now in Europe and in the US trying
Speaker 1: to keep these people out. Once you leave China, to
Speaker 1: what degree do you feel the presence of China, whether
Speaker 1: it be ownership, business or whatever.
Speaker 3: The company is doing the only way the ordinary person
Speaker 3: feels it is the majority of cars on the road
Speaker 3: in Southeast Asia, and not the majority.
Speaker 2: A large number, but it's gone from a very small
Speaker 2: number to a very large number. I think it probably
Speaker 2: be only a year before the majority are Chinese built
Speaker 2: and the same in Europe. It doesn't shock us because
Speaker 2: we remember when all the cars and iron became I'm
Speaker 2: very old, when all the cars in the road and
Speaker 2: ignorant were British, and then the Japanese cars started coming in.
Speaker 2: So now we're just being shocked. To my god, you know,
Speaker 2: the Chinese. Who ever thought they'd build a car, there's
Speaker 2: just a set of Japanese. You have Chinese, and we're
Speaker 2: permanently frightened. Told we ought to be frightened because they
Speaker 2: could suddenly turn off every car or you know, they
Speaker 2: have a switch where they could make all the cars
Speaker 2: drive off cliffs or die or whatever. But that's science
Speaker 2: fiction and stuff, because you know that this sort of
Speaker 2: this sort of communal every time you see people believe
Speaker 2: that a huge number of people can get together secretly
Speaker 2: and do something. You know, it's about anyone who's managed
Speaker 2: a group. You know, you can't get five people degree
Speaker 2: to do one thing. You don't get hundreds of people
Speaker 2: around the world to do something dastardly deed, all at
Speaker 2: once in total secret. So I doubt very much that
Speaker 2: we have much to fear from Chinese cars other than
Speaker 2: competition to the current industry, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, to people starting out who want to be managers
Speaker 1: in the music business, what would your advice.
Speaker 2: Be, Well, don't go to a school and learn how
Speaker 2: to be a manager. I give talks a lot at universities,
Speaker 2: and one of the first questions I asked is, you
Speaker 2: know how many people here will actually want to go
Speaker 2: in the music industry, because half the people in the
Speaker 2: lecture will be taking it, of course, as a second course,
Speaker 2: because they're actually going to be doctors or something had
Speaker 2: about you know, twenty thirty people have put their hand
Speaker 2: that would say how many want to be managers? And
Speaker 2: ten five ten, and I SI, you're wasting your time
Speaker 2: sitting here. Even listening to me today is a waste
Speaker 2: of time. You just get up or leave this room
Speaker 2: and find someone to manage. Doesn't matter who they are,
Speaker 2: they can be the worst, most untalented person. Ever. You
Speaker 2: won't learn anything about management until you start managing somebody.
Speaker 2: You find out that it's a relationship between two people.
Speaker 2: A great manager with a great artist might move on
Speaker 2: to find he never manages a good artist again. And
Speaker 2: you manage. It's a relationship. It has to work, and
Speaker 2: you have to learn how to do how to have
Speaker 2: that relationship with somebody. There's nothing a manager has to
Speaker 2: do in terms of the business for his artist which
Speaker 2: somebody else couldn't do for you. If you're a manager
Speaker 2: and you don't know this, you don't but that you
Speaker 2: may need to consult a lawyer or a publisher, an
Speaker 2: expert in it. But that's what managements about. Management isn't
Speaker 2: about knowing it, and management is about having the relationship
Speaker 2: with the artist and taking from the artists the pressure
Speaker 2: of dealing with an industry. And the sooner you start
Speaker 2: doing it, the sooner you'll learn about it. And there's
Speaker 2: nothing you learn about getting on with somebody other than
Speaker 2: being with that person and finding out about it. So
Speaker 2: first of all, go and find someone to manage good
Speaker 2: or bad.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've managed household nme acts. Some acts stay with
Speaker 1: the same manager their entire career. Some acts have had
Speaker 1: multiple managers. To what degree when you manage an act,
Speaker 1: are you worried about the act leaving you and to
Speaker 1: what degree are you proactive to make sure that doesn't happen.
Speaker 2: Well, everybody's different, So there's no generalization here because managers
Speaker 2: have as many different personalities as there are people I've
Speaker 2: never managed an act ever who I cared if they
Speaker 2: left me, because managing an artist is a very, very
Speaker 2: time consuming, emotional consuming thing. It's twenty four or seven.
Speaker 2: It's not like any other job. I'm the person I
Speaker 2: prefer projects. You know. The problem with management is it's
Speaker 2: exactly that marriage. It doesn't stop. So you're never going
Speaker 2: to get out of this until they leave you. And
Speaker 2: so anytime an actor's left me for whatever I lose.
Speaker 2: By them leaving me, I gain freedom. So it's never
Speaker 2: bothered me any actors left me if thought, oh how lovely.
Speaker 2: Now along with lovely, there's lots of income, loss of precision,
Speaker 2: all those things. You have to balance them. But this
Speaker 2: is me, it's not everybody else. And I do know
Speaker 2: managers who are who go to great lengths to try
Speaker 2: to make sure their groups can't leave them. By intertwining
Speaker 2: their earnings together with the manager's earnings, that becomes difficult
Speaker 2: to extract one from the other. By well, the classic
Speaker 2: rock and roll one was to get hooked on drugs,
Speaker 2: which you supply. That's a very tall true one. Nowadays,
Speaker 2: it'd be more like to be a business involvement. Each
Speaker 2: person's different. I just feel that if a group wants
Speaker 2: to leave you, then you're not going to be able
Speaker 2: to manage them. You know that the management contract can't
Speaker 2: be held in law. I mean it's a personal services agreement.
Speaker 2: Any personal services agreement can be broken. If you can
Speaker 2: just establish their relationships, you can super damages. But if
Speaker 2: you can establish the relationship is broken, you can walk
Speaker 2: out out of a manager contract. Private side can walk
Speaker 2: out of the other and then just super adapt for
Speaker 2: damages the money which would have been earned that keep
Speaker 2: the thing going. If you want to keep it going,
Speaker 2: just make sure you keep it going. You know. Managers
Speaker 2: start usually is almost saying the fingali sort of way
Speaker 2: the artist comes to them and worship, saying, oh God,
Speaker 2: this guy's wonderful. He's going to help you with this
Speaker 2: and that, and he knows so much, and he's introducing
Speaker 2: me to people, and he's getting me doers. He's making money.
Speaker 2: But in the end of two or three years, the
Speaker 2: manager will be a little more of the tea boy.
Speaker 2: He may present to himself as something else. But as
Speaker 2: the artist grows and makes money, and if he's been
Speaker 2: well looked after by the manager and has good income,
Speaker 2: the familiarity grows and the lack of necessity of that
Speaker 2: manager grows. You know, the key, absolutely important thing a
Speaker 2: manager does in their artist's life is break them. And
Speaker 2: once the artist has broken, they can pretty well get
Speaker 2: by without managers. They can hire key people, booking agents
Speaker 2: and accountants, business advisors of all sorts, not have to
Speaker 2: pay a percentage to sort of just pay the fees
Speaker 2: required by those people. I'd only enjoy management at that level.
Speaker 2: Every time I've broken a group, and to the very top,
Speaker 2: I become bored because the fun is the challenge to
Speaker 2: how you take this group into the industry, make the
Speaker 2: industry work for the group, make the group successful. When
Speaker 2: was excellent? Example once once they're the biggest group in
Speaker 2: the world. What are you doing, You're just you're just
Speaker 2: maintaining something. It's it's the difference between building a car
Speaker 2: and driving a car. I like building them.
Speaker 1: Okay, some managers have contracts. Some managers don't. What's your
Speaker 1: philosophy there.
Speaker 2: Well don't don't. I'll tell you why you agree. What's
Speaker 2: going to It's a change of email saying I'm going
Speaker 2: to get twenty percent just that and put down seven
Speaker 2: or eight key points that's enough. Don't have a contract.
Speaker 2: You have a contract one day sometime with anybody you're
Speaker 2: with the whole time. Remember you, if you're managing a
Speaker 2: group mup before or five, you only got to have
Speaker 2: a conflict with one of them. And this will happen
Speaker 2: if they go to the lawyer. We don't like Simon.
Speaker 2: He made us nasty joke yesterday. He farted when im
Speaker 2: golfriend was present, some stupid little thing. Just get rid
Speaker 2: of my I hate him. And the lawyer says, well,
Speaker 2: you can't get rid of the marriage because he farted.
Speaker 2: You know you fart too. Think of something. Oh, I'll
Speaker 2: say he was rude to my mother. That's not right.
Speaker 2: Say he stole some money. Oh okay, we're saying sells
Speaker 2: some money. And so the lawyer makes up some incredible,
Speaker 2: terrible thing, because that's the lawyer's job to get the
Speaker 2: artist out of the management contract. And the letter comes
Speaker 2: and that insenses the manager. This is a complete lie.
Speaker 2: I didn't do that. So he goes to his lawyer.
Speaker 2: Within two days, during a conflict which will never be resolved,
Speaker 2: you now hate each other, and the lawyers are very actress.
Speaker 2: You continue to hate each other because there any money
Speaker 2: from you. If you don't have a contract, they don't
Speaker 2: have to do that. They just say you're fired and
Speaker 2: they go home to bed. But next day they wake
Speaker 2: up and think it's a bit difficult about Simon. I'll
Speaker 2: call them up and see if I can make up.
Speaker 2: So they call up and you say, sorry about last night.
Speaker 2: That's okay, no contract, no conflict.
Speaker 1: Okay, but what about sunset clauses and collecting revenues for
Speaker 1: your percentage on things you're involved in.
Speaker 2: Get on with something else. I'm not a normal This
Speaker 2: is very American, but it is true. Americans are far
Speaker 2: more concerned with money than Europeans, but plenty of Europeans
Speaker 2: are too. I love money. Who doesn't have money. It's
Speaker 2: great to have money, but I've never done anything to
Speaker 2: make money. Money is that money is a lovely bonus
Speaker 2: and doing things I enjoyed doing. And you know, if
Speaker 2: people leave you say actually going your an initial little
Speaker 2: agreement looking email the exchange. If you leave you I'll
Speaker 2: take ten percent of our half the commission for the
Speaker 2: next year. Thing I've fixed and I said, don't pay you.
Speaker 2: They don't pay you. You know when people cheat me,
Speaker 2: I don't go to court. I just say, is somebody,
Speaker 2: don't do it again the rest of your life. There's
Speaker 2: other things you can do.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning of what you said
Speaker 1: about management relationships. Is that something DNA? Is it something
Speaker 1: you can work on to what degree is that involved
Speaker 1: with who to choose to manage or is it come
Speaker 1: after that? Tell me more about establishing the relationship.
Speaker 2: I think it comes after that. You know that there's
Speaker 2: an instinctive thing because it's music to want to manage
Speaker 2: somebody who makes music you like. You know, if you
Speaker 2: if I go to a club and sometimes guys playing
Speaker 2: brilliant piano like oscapedis cross up. I'll have to manage
Speaker 2: this guy. But I'm also you know, a business guan.
Speaker 2: I look at it, well, you're not going to make
Speaker 2: your money. You know, I need some teenager can hard
Speaker 2: this thing, but looks straight and attracts girls. So see,
Speaker 2: it isn't the immediate attraction musically. It's something more complex
Speaker 2: than that. And often it's not not an immediate traction
Speaker 2: in personality. I mean, if there's ammsia, dislike or revulsion insary,
Speaker 2: it's not going to not going to work. But if
Speaker 2: someone is a bit cool, a bit bland, a bit uninteresting.
Speaker 2: But the project looks good, the music looks good. It's
Speaker 2: worth getting to know that there are very few people
Speaker 2: who really are uninteresting. I mean, you know, if anywhere
Speaker 2: in the world you get the taxi and talk, you're
Speaker 2: going to find something interesting to talk about with anybody.
Speaker 2: They're always going to have some experience you haven't had.
Speaker 2: So it's proactive you need to learn. The other thing
Speaker 2: is no major performing artist ever. I used to say
Speaker 2: ninety percent, but no, it have never come across it.
Speaker 2: Every major performing artist was driven to become that by
Speaker 2: some sort of trauma, some sort of traveler in their childhood,
Speaker 2: some sort of angst which happened when they were young.
Speaker 2: It might be the death of a parent or sibling,
Speaker 2: or even a pet if they weren't given enough sympathy
Speaker 2: for it. Or it could be much worse. It could
Speaker 2: be some sort of child abuse. Something drives them into themselves,
Speaker 2: makes them lonely. They didn't get love at a point
Speaker 2: in their need, didn't get loved to someone they needed
Speaker 2: it from a point in their life when they needed it,
Speaker 2: and they were retreating to themselves. Being creative. It sort
Speaker 2: of helps a permanent, nagging, mental upset in them, and
Speaker 2: they're desperate for the love of an audience, and that's
Speaker 2: that's what it's about. And there's no everybody you see
Speaker 2: who's successful on stage. You go into their past, you
Speaker 2: look at it, and that happened. I used to say,
Speaker 2: it's ninety percent. I've never come across the ten percent
Speaker 2: I'm allowing. Isn't like that. It's always there once you
Speaker 2: look at it, and the manager is taking that on.
Speaker 2: You know, don't think you're going to be a manager
Speaker 2: and avoid that. That angst to upset and permanently unsettled
Speaker 2: mental state the artist has is going to be given
Speaker 2: to you to deal with, and you have to accept it,
Speaker 2: enjoy having that problem. I suppose, I mean to some degree.
Speaker 2: I suppose managers who are good must have some aspect
Speaker 2: of what analysis has. There must be something in the
Speaker 2: knownergy's background which which makes them sympathize and understand that
Speaker 2: where it's not so acute. So perhaps even by being managers,
Speaker 2: we're giving ourselves some sort of therapy. Possibly I haven't
Speaker 2: delved into that too much, but it's very likely and
Speaker 2: the best, the best managers. It's very interesting, you know,
Speaker 2: you look at Roger who managed, who managed Tina Turner?
Speaker 2: Roger Davis, Roger Davis man he managed three other major artists.
Speaker 2: Everyone has the same background. Do you think Roger Davis
Speaker 2: doesn't have the same background? I never even looked. Every
Speaker 2: one of them had divorce spirits. I'm sure Roger Davis
Speaker 2: had difficult and at least parents who fought. You know
Speaker 2: that there must be some similarity. The pain or the
Speaker 2: hurts or the room the results of the pain isn't
Speaker 2: so acute and the manager, but I'm sure that understanding
Speaker 2: of that emotional distress must be their managers successful managers.
Speaker 1: Okay, I one hundred percent agree with you on the acts,
Speaker 1: but I take it one step further. The act is
Speaker 1: looking for the love that they didn't get from their
Speaker 1: family unit. Usually they become ultra successful. They have money,
Speaker 1: they have relationships, they have houses, they have cars, but
Speaker 1: they're still not happy. And once they realize that they
Speaker 1: can never make another hit record. Can you comment on that?
Speaker 2: Well, still, as long as they're not happy, they'll probably
Speaker 2: gone making hit records. The problem is that they get happy.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean your blobby to manager, why don't
Speaker 2: you help your artists? Why don't you centered a psychiatrist, Well,
Speaker 2: we do, and they're nearly all bipolar are They're given
Speaker 2: medication and the medication helps me. But you know, by
Speaker 2: the time an artist is twenty five or thirty, he
Speaker 2: is used to his is a disability. It's like being
Speaker 2: partly blind or not having a limb. Learn to live
Speaker 2: with it. They enjoy their disabilities. You know, many blind
Speaker 2: people don't want to be given sights. You know, it's
Speaker 2: extraordinary for people like us to believe that, but you know,
Speaker 2: there are people who are deaf who don't want to
Speaker 2: be given hearing, and people who are blind who don't
Speaker 2: want the sight to be given to them, and people
Speaker 2: live with it. Learn to love their disabilities. We have. Look,
Speaker 2: we've all got some sort of disability as some sort
Speaker 2: if you look into yourself and own up with some quirk,
Speaker 2: something which you makes you a better person if you
Speaker 2: didn't have it, but you like it. You learn to
Speaker 2: live with it. And they enjoy their mental distress if
Speaker 2: you like. They enjoy being able to deal with it.
Speaker 2: They get medication for the help their bipolarism, but they
Speaker 2: take it. They're not very creative, so they don't take it,
Speaker 2: and then they have creative periods and then they're out
Speaker 2: of their heads, so they do take it. Yeah, a
Speaker 2: lot of people stop taking their bipolar medicine to be creative,
Speaker 2: and then once they've created the basic outline of what
Speaker 2: they want to do song wise or whatever it is,
Speaker 2: they go back to taking it so they can now
Speaker 2: edit it and polish it in a calmer form. The
Speaker 2: difficulty for managers. If you really went to work improving
Speaker 2: the mental health of your artists until they were completely
Speaker 2: completely boring, they would be completely boring. There would be
Speaker 2: no music. So I think you're wrong about that. As
Speaker 2: long as they're still unhappy, they'll still make music. You know,
Speaker 2: when you creating two artists is like taking an aspirint
Speaker 2: or something ball stronger than harassment. It is at the
Speaker 2: moment it soothes the distress.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go to the half of what I said.
Speaker 1: Only musical trends can change. But why do most acts
Speaker 1: have a active, successful career and don't have a recording
Speaker 1: hit thereafter?
Speaker 2: I think that's the public. I think the public like
Speaker 2: artists at a certain point, a certain projection. You know
Speaker 2: what when you create, when you create a record and
Speaker 2: it's a huge shit ah, it's very this instance, quite
Speaker 2: a long time ago that twenty years guys asked back
Speaker 2: to work for Shelly Bassy, and I thought it's a
Speaker 2: great idea. Yes, times she made another record and I
Speaker 2: went off and found a couple of records. You want
Speaker 2: to make a record. But it was very clear, very quickly,
Speaker 2: that nobody wanted to record for her. But this was
Speaker 2: an artist who went out for one hundred thousand pounds
Speaker 2: a night, and I'm talking a long time ago. This
Speaker 2: is huge, huge money. And continue to she could get
Speaker 2: many many months or years ahead as you wanted. And
Speaker 2: yet it was quite clear nobody was going to make
Speaker 2: another record, but a successful record with so we buy.
Speaker 2: We fall in love with an artist with a certain imagery,
Speaker 2: a certain moment, a certain pain or aura which surrounds them,
Speaker 2: and that's what we want, that's what we like. We're stuck.
Speaker 2: We don't think of you name anassist to most of them.
Speaker 2: We think of only only in that period. Very very
Speaker 2: few transcend it. Some do, some do, at least for
Speaker 2: life work they do. I mean, we love Mick Jagger
Speaker 2: being eighty, it's extraordinary, but we do. I actually like
Speaker 2: watching Mick Jagger at eighty now that I used to
Speaker 2: love him when he was twenty five or thirty, but
Speaker 2: I actually enjoy watching this old man is so utterly
Speaker 2: brilliant on stage, and Bruce Springsteen the same mid seventies.
Speaker 2: I like him at that. You're saying, now, can he
Speaker 2: make a successful record? It's very difficult because that the
Speaker 2: market which wanted that successful record as a market for
Speaker 2: the same age as he was when you made it,
Speaker 2: and we're not. It's the market which is the problem.
Speaker 2: We're not receptive to a record by an old man.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back once again to the relationship. I
Speaker 1: know of household name acts who fired their manager because
Speaker 1: the manager didn't come out on the road, didn't come
Speaker 1: out on the opening gig. To what degree? As a
Speaker 1: manager you thinking that, you know, there's some act you're
Speaker 1: connecting with multiple times a day. Other acts, you say,
Speaker 1: I better call them or email them text in these days,
Speaker 1: I better maintain the relationship otherwise is going to be
Speaker 1: a bad result.
Speaker 2: It's a difficult one, Bob. If you if you want,
Speaker 2: if you once start going to every gig by an artist,
Speaker 2: that's what you're going to do the rest of your life,
Speaker 2: you know, And and you don't be on the road.
Speaker 2: Is that you've got tour manager for that, and that's
Speaker 2: a waste of a manager's time. The same you know,
Speaker 2: an artists on has complained why you've got two acts. Well,
Speaker 2: every single contact I have anywhere in the world, through
Speaker 2: any means, is a benefit to my management of you.
Speaker 2: And you're going to benefit from you having two or
Speaker 2: three or four us a'smare contact. But not to go
Speaker 2: to an opening night, not to go with an a
Speaker 2: portant event, not to turn up say once every five
Speaker 2: or six gigs, that's really stupid too. And of course
Speaker 2: they want to see you there. They're like you, they
Speaker 2: support you, they feel more confident when you're around. They
Speaker 2: want to tell you what problems they've had since you
Speaker 2: were last around. I think not to go at all
Speaker 2: is completely foolish, and to go all the time is
Speaker 2: just it's not a benefit to anyone and it or
Speaker 2: where you are and it will be an over familiarity
Speaker 2: they don't want you will end up as a tea boy.
Speaker 1: Then, But how about other means of communication? Do you say, oh,
Speaker 1: I haven't heard from so and so in three days,
Speaker 1: I better make contact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, assess them all you know, if you think
Speaker 2: he's really happy that he hasn't heard from you for
Speaker 2: three days, perhaps you leave alone for a bit. But look,
Speaker 2: it's now different from a marriage, is it. You know,
Speaker 2: you go away for two days and normally you don't
Speaker 2: like to travel together, and know you're going to go
Speaker 2: where somewhere on business two days, and actually you realize
Speaker 2: you're both going to enjoy it. She's going to go
Speaker 2: off with her girlfriends or do something. You're going to
Speaker 2: be doing something different, and you make a judgment. Shall
Speaker 2: I call the next day? Oh that's just too much?
Speaker 2: Come on, we're together three hundred and sixty five days
Speaker 2: a year. Surely two days apart will be nice. Enjoy
Speaker 2: it and how many days do you let that go?
Speaker 2: It's no difference. It's exactly the same group. And this
Speaker 2: is the next Really a thing about managing a group
Speaker 2: is you're managing four or five people and they're completely different.
Speaker 2: One person in that group is going to be the
Speaker 2: real classic artist type we're talking about who's driven the group,
Speaker 2: who creates a group has got this huge angst hanging
Speaker 2: over him, who's mentally disturbed, who has driven to be
Speaker 2: performed because of something that's happened in Chanted. The other
Speaker 2: three or four may be nothing more than just very
Speaker 2: good craftsmen who surround him well and give him company,
Speaker 2: who plays superbly well and wouldn't play so well without
Speaker 2: him there. But they're not the same type of personality.
Speaker 2: And you usually get one person in the group who
Speaker 2: is an incredibly difficult mona, I mean, who dislikes everything
Speaker 2: and grumbles. They may not be that important musically, but
Speaker 2: they might be important glue to the group, and you
Speaker 2: have to deal with all of them and say you're
Speaker 2: dealing with their internal conflicts or thinking what's best for
Speaker 2: each of them. You know, it's not as simple as
Speaker 2: go and see the group five people. It may well
Speaker 2: be talking to each one of them separately, some of
Speaker 2: them more often than others.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've traveled the world, You've written books, you have
Speaker 1: a great number of relationships. Did you consciously establish those
Speaker 1: or is it just a matter of the people you
Speaker 1: worked with that you maintain the relationships? How did you
Speaker 1: hate to use this term? How did you grow your network?
Speaker 2: Wow? Travel eating out to me? I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: I wrote a book. I'm coming to take you to lunch,
Speaker 2: And I've often said that I did I think for
Speaker 2: twenty or thirty years, I thought lunch was the key
Speaker 2: thing to the music industry. Not eating. I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: it's being in a restaurant. It's it's you go to
Speaker 2: lunch and you're with somebody, you discuss something, very amicable surroundings,
Speaker 2: you see other people, You call over to the other tatorle, hello,
Speaker 2: you know what's going on? We must get together, we
Speaker 2: see each other. It's the most casual way to expand
Speaker 2: your relationship without without you know, being introduced to someone
Speaker 2: is too is too sincere, too difficult to Now we've
Speaker 2: got to sit down and talk because he's that man
Speaker 2: just introduces. We've got to say something meaningful. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't much like this guy, or maybe I could
Speaker 2: like him in other sectences. But lunch, talking across for it,
Speaker 2: talking across the restaurant, going to table or table, being
Speaker 2: with the person you're with, it is to me it's
Speaker 2: a finitive way of growing networks. It's not quick. You
Speaker 2: can't do it for two weeks and suddenly have a network.
Speaker 2: But you've done it for fifty years, you end up
Speaker 2: knowing an awful lot of people. And I would have
Speaker 2: thought half of all the people I know in the
Speaker 2: music industry, I first met somewhere at a meal or
Speaker 2: a dinner, and I probably wasn't having that dinner with
Speaker 2: them through somebody I was there. Other people do it
Speaker 2: by going to music business events, but I don't like
Speaker 2: music business events. I've often actually said I don't quite
Speaker 2: mean it, but I do mean it too. I've never
Speaker 2: felt part of the music industry. I think what I
Speaker 2: mean is I often haven't felt part of the music industry.
Speaker 2: But the music industry is it's very split into two things.
Speaker 2: Anything I've gone to a record I've said, anything I've
Speaker 2: gone to a record company, I felt I was visiting
Speaker 2: the music industry. When I left the record company, I
Speaker 2: thought I was leaving the music industry. I've always felt that.
Speaker 2: You know, the music industry is really two, two completely
Speaker 2: different sections. So there is the corporate section, and the
Speaker 2: corporate section would be the majors with Sony and Water
Speaker 2: and Universal. Probably the collection Society is probably William Morris CIA.
Speaker 2: And that is they're always like the government. That's that's
Speaker 2: the civil service, that's the government. They set the rules,
Speaker 2: this is how they do things. All they're interested in money. Yes,
Speaker 2: they talk about music. But actually they don't give a
Speaker 2: damn about music. They get about money, about making it work,
Speaker 2: about huge amounts of money generates, and that's that's fine,
Speaker 2: because that's the money we all need. That's the money
Speaker 2: that the industry has and generates, and we other creative
Speaker 2: forty percent can use. So they like the government. And
Speaker 2: who wants to work for the government. It's not that
Speaker 2: you don't need a government. We need a government. We
Speaker 2: want a government, but there are there are an unelected
Speaker 2: government unless you choose to wiegle you away and become
Speaker 2: part of it. And the creative part of the industry
Speaker 2: is what I love, the scams and the fun and
Speaker 2: the music. But you know, the music and the scams
Speaker 2: are equally fun because no major artist has ever been made,
Speaker 2: or built or created without scams. The idea that the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones would have had hits just with the music,
Speaker 2: without the imagery and things Andrew who Golden did with them,
Speaker 2: or the Beatles could have had their hits without the
Speaker 2: look and their hairstyle and the suits. Every major artist,
Speaker 2: even the ones you think are the most austere or unscammed,
Speaker 2: where a combination of image and music. That is how
Speaker 2: the industry works. And I can't think of any act
Speaker 2: I've ever seen where the music alone solved the act.
Speaker 2: It was always the image with the music, and where
Speaker 2: you think it wasn't the image, you think again, as
Speaker 2: it was the lack of obvious flamboyance in the image
Speaker 2: which made it, or always as a combination.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're a manager, what can you tell us about
Speaker 1: the personality of someone who works for a label or agency?
Speaker 1: The soul called myr quotes government.
Speaker 2: Well, usually their dream of leaving and getting their independence
Speaker 2: and using what they've learned to work as an independent
Speaker 2: outside of it. And often they do and they don't
Speaker 2: get more interesting. They they either were boring to start with,
Speaker 2: or the corporation has taking the edge off their soul.
Speaker 2: Within the corporations, there are always one or two people who, really,
Speaker 2: in my use of we don't belong in corporations. They dominate,
Speaker 2: they take over, They run corporations in a way which
Speaker 2: is so flamboyant that they really should have belonged to
Speaker 2: the forty percent, you know, the water yetnikov or the God.
Speaker 2: I'd leave us some people that they they're huge personalities
Speaker 2: and they didn't need to be corporate. But the bulk
Speaker 2: of the corporation are corporate, and they're dull, and they
Speaker 2: depend on salaries, and they're not if they're cast off
Speaker 2: from that their own functional world and tomorrow function well
Speaker 2: within the corporation. It's either I find it very difficult
Speaker 2: to get any joy from being in a corporation. At
Speaker 2: the same time, I don't dislike them. We use them.
Speaker 2: And the outside of the managers, the ultimate outside, goes
Speaker 2: into the corporation to raid it. I mean, you go in,
Speaker 2: you have to learn to manipulate it. A half of
Speaker 2: your artists. And the other interesting fact, of course is
Speaker 2: whereas managers never join the corporate world, the artists do.
Speaker 2: The artists sign a contract with the corporate world, agreeing
Speaker 2: to enter into it, become a part of everything they
Speaker 2: ostensibly don't like. So the artists get tied into the
Speaker 2: corporate world and the way the managers don't and compromise
Speaker 2: every big artist. The idea that the artists don't compromise,
Speaker 2: it's absurd. The bigger the artists is, the more they've compromised.
Speaker 2: Because the artist needs the industry to make them what
Speaker 2: they are, they're not going to get that audience they
Speaker 2: need and crave so much without the industry doing it
Speaker 2: for them. So the artists are the people who compromise.
Speaker 2: There are many, many great singers and players and musicians
Speaker 2: who are not big stars because they didn't compromise. So
Speaker 2: it's the idea. The artist doesn't compromise, it's disrupt The
Speaker 2: manager's there to oversee the degree of compromise, to help
Speaker 2: the decrease the compromise, to keep them away from going
Speaker 2: too far, and helping them get into it when they
Speaker 2: don't want to.
Speaker 1: You talk about not feeling like you're a part of
Speaker 1: the music industry, is that a result of the role
Speaker 1: the manager independent or is that your personality which comes
Speaker 1: from your background.
Speaker 2: My personality, for sure, I like being an outsider, you know,
Speaker 2: I felt that about everything. You know. People say, is
Speaker 2: it because you're gay? No, because it's going to help
Speaker 2: feel part of the gay world. I mean I don't
Speaker 2: like being part of it. Well, I don't like parties,
Speaker 2: as you know. Well, when when Live Aid took place,
Speaker 2: George was going to go and sing there, Andrew's going
Speaker 2: to go and stay singing with him. All the managers
Speaker 2: were told they could come. Everybody had to go by
Speaker 2: helicopter because the roads are going to be blocked up
Speaker 2: to Wembley all day. We had all been a helicopter
Speaker 2: at ten o'clock in the morning and it would go
Speaker 2: on till ten in the evening. And I just thought,
Speaker 2: what an absolute fucking notemare I'm going to be stuck
Speaker 2: for ten hours with all these people, can't go anywhere,
Speaker 2: and you're backstage and they're going to be talking rubbish
Speaker 2: and taking a caine and they'll be ghastly catering. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not. I'm not going there. I want nothing to
Speaker 2: do with it. So I didn't go. That sort of
Speaker 2: titrifies because you know, I missed something which is an
Speaker 2: incredible occasion. I should have been it, but it just
Speaker 2: looked horrible to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, in the book about your career, sour Mouth Sweet Bottom,
Speaker 1: you talk a lot about Armed, Armed or it again.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us some stories there.
Speaker 2: I loved the guy and he was not a corporate guy,
Speaker 2: and it was extraordinary how he got dragged into the
Speaker 2: corporate world. But he didn't. I mean he really he
Speaker 2: worked within it and stayed out of it. He was
Speaker 2: just he was as unusual for Americans in the music industry.
Speaker 2: He was bilingual, he knew art books, was the most
Speaker 2: sophisticated European style person. And that made him very agreeable
Speaker 2: to me. And and he loved music, and he loved
Speaker 2: the scam and the and the difficulty and that. You know,
Speaker 2: he was more interested in going out with Mick Jagger
Speaker 2: every night for a year to persuade him to sign
Speaker 2: with the label than he was with having him on
Speaker 2: the label. If you see what I mean. It was
Speaker 2: the chase, it was the fun. There were more stories
Speaker 2: revolving around the army was what's that wonderful story when
Speaker 2: arm it one night and he calls up Mick and says, Mick,
Speaker 2: I'm going to a party and mix it up. But
Speaker 2: he'll come on, Mick, come to a party with me,
Speaker 2: and so mix it okay? Is this after midnight? I'll
Speaker 2: go to a party with you. There isn't a party,
Speaker 2: so it's got to creative party, you know. So he
Speaker 2: calls up Share and Shares and says, Share, we're going
Speaker 2: to come around and see you. And Shares just started
Speaker 2: an affair with with with David. What's not God? Wasn't
Speaker 2: it gay? David? Please tell me the the.
Speaker 1: Well I'm thinking of Greg allman, I'm thinking of you know.
Speaker 2: The guy, and Share has just started an affair with
Speaker 2: David Geffing is something in the straight period?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And so arm It calls up to Share and says,
Speaker 2: we're coming round. We're coming around for a drink and
Speaker 2: Shares where it's two in the morning. I says, yeah, well,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with that. Let's go around, And so Arbit
Speaker 2: takes Mick around and some drunken countess he's found somewhere
Speaker 2: else in the restaurant and they all turn up at
Speaker 2: Shares place, and Shares somehow got herself together and come down, says,
Speaker 2: and David gifts and say're looking very grumpy because they
Speaker 2: just got into bed, and Army says. Arvid says to David,
Speaker 2: uh get the champagne out, And David said, we hadn't
Speaker 2: got there, and hit says, well, we never had that
Speaker 2: problem where Sonny was here? Is there a sums up Arbit?
Speaker 2: You know, he was out every night all night and
Speaker 2: what he what he liked when anything else was being
Speaker 2: able to walk into a corporate meeting at Warners at
Speaker 2: nine in the morning or nine thirty in the morning,
Speaker 2: a big meeting something you know, the monthly really important meeting,
Speaker 2: and he'd been out all night drinking, drugging, listen to music, dancing,
Speaker 2: and he could walk in and be as sharp and
Speaker 2: as effective as all the others he enjoyed. He enjoyed
Speaker 2: that more than anything else.
Speaker 1: And what about yetnikov.
Speaker 2: Look if I knew less well, manual quite well, but
Speaker 2: he was less. He was just so he was just
Speaker 2: so explosively. He loved his Jewishness and throwing out and
Speaker 2: I always liked that. So, you know, I've got this
Speaker 2: deficiency that I wasn't Jewish. I would loved to have
Speaker 2: added the whole Jewish culture to all the things I am.
Speaker 2: They have been gays great, but to have been Jewish,
Speaker 2: imn have to be black and crippled and any anything
Speaker 2: which will give you another another view of life. But
Speaker 2: I was brought up, you know. I went to the
Speaker 2: film Inustry when I was eighteen, and to everybody in
Speaker 2: the film store, I was working with the Jewish. So
Speaker 2: all day you were hearing Yiddish and Jewish jokes and
Speaker 2: Jewish humor. And it seemed to me the way music
Speaker 2: show business should be rung, you know, So I like that,
Speaker 2: so very felt very comfortable around around Walter, and because
Speaker 2: he's spent a long time with Alan Grabman, who was
Speaker 2: another another person saying they'd spend hours on the found
Speaker 2: together just just talking bullshit together, swearing and just saying.
Speaker 2: And he talked in that he talked in a way
Speaker 2: it wasn't really him, which so many people in that
Speaker 2: position to, you know. He said, yeah, we got to
Speaker 2: fuck the artists. We've got you know, we fucked the
Speaker 2: artists before they fuck us. We've got to get this
Speaker 2: go that. And of course he wasn't inside. He wasn't
Speaker 2: like that at all. He loved artists. It was just
Speaker 2: marcho businessman talk, but he was. He did get mad.
Speaker 2: He out of control for years. I'm like, go to
Speaker 2: New York and have a meeting, and after as I
Speaker 2: go upstairs and see his water around there, said yeah,
Speaker 2: go and just walk in and see water. And he'd
Speaker 2: be putting cocaine in his vodka and it's only eleven
Speaker 2: in the morning, and he'd sit there and say, who
Speaker 2: can I know? You know, who can I and who
Speaker 2: can I call up? Bloody David Gef And I don't
Speaker 2: like that. I got to call him out. He him
Speaker 2: called people up and just say things out of the
Speaker 2: blue to absolutely infuriate them. You know, David, we were
Speaker 2: pulling the record. We're not putting it out. You know.
Speaker 2: He held the phone out. Let me hear David explain,
Speaker 2: and he said, as okay, we'll put it out. He
Speaker 2: had he was a wicked schoolboy, he really was.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. You're born in
Speaker 1: the late thirties. Are you aware of World War two?
Speaker 1: And what degree does the war in the aftermath affect
Speaker 1: you as a person.
Speaker 2: Very late thirties, ninety thirty nine. Before the war started,
Speaker 2: it started shortly afterwards. I was worried war because from
Speaker 2: the age of two we were shipped out of London
Speaker 2: because it wasn't safe, and so my mother and my
Speaker 2: sister and I went to dev just quiet little Enclaven
Speaker 2: by the sea, and my mother, both my mother and
Speaker 2: my father had been orphans. Both in both cases they
Speaker 2: were brought up by my mother by aunts and my
Speaker 2: father by by justice mother, and they didn't know how
Speaker 2: to be parents. So I don't be in that in
Speaker 2: a bad way. It's a wonderful work. There was no costting,
Speaker 2: there was no over control, and two or three I
Speaker 2: look back and think, this really couldn't be possible. It
Speaker 2: was possible because it had to be that year, because
Speaker 2: it was in that place, which meant it was ninety
Speaker 2: forty two or forty three. I could go out by
Speaker 2: myself and go for walks at two or three years old,
Speaker 2: and my mother tells stories about how it would come
Speaker 2: to this. We were staying in a boarding house. You know,
Speaker 2: boarding houses, Lunch is one till one point thirty. If
Speaker 2: you're not there, there's no lunch, and this is wartime.
Speaker 2: If you don't eat lunch, there's no food, el sweat,
Speaker 2: that's it. You know, they've got rations. And it come
Speaker 2: to one o'clock and I wasn't there, and she'd run
Speaker 2: outside to see where I was, and she couldn't find me.
Speaker 2: She'd run down the road around and then she would
Speaker 2: get to the beach, which was ten minutes away, and
Speaker 2: I'd be sitting on the further out rock, sitting gazing
Speaker 2: out and see dreaming. You know, couldn't have been more
Speaker 2: than three years old. This is acceptable in those days.
Speaker 2: Parents allowed their children to wander off and fend for themselves.
Speaker 2: So I was doing that by three or four. You
Speaker 2: can imagine how independent I was for the time I
Speaker 2: was five or six. They gave me a when the
Speaker 2: war was over. I think it was my sixth birthday.
Speaker 2: I was given a bicycle for my birthday and I
Speaker 2: cycled to school and at weekends I could go out
Speaker 2: all day at six years old. So after breakfast I'd
Speaker 2: take the bike as long as I was back by
Speaker 2: six o'clock in the evening, so I had ten hours.
Speaker 2: So I worked out how far I could cycle in
Speaker 2: five hours, and I go there. I'd be given a
Speaker 2: sandwich when I got there and eat my sandwich and
Speaker 2: cycle back again and so over the next year. The
Speaker 2: time I was six or seven, I've been everywhere around
Speaker 2: London where you could cycle in five hours and seven
Speaker 2: years old eight years old doing this nowadays prison. I
Speaker 2: think parents would go to prison for allowing that to happen.
Speaker 2: There was a very funny situation when I was I
Speaker 2: think I was eight, and I really wanted to go further.
Speaker 2: I was bored with the five out limit, and one
Speaker 2: day I just started out cycled Waxford, which is well
Speaker 2: over the limit, and I didn't get there to four
Speaker 2: in the afternoon. It was really going to be in trouble,
Speaker 2: and so I went to the local police station and
Speaker 2: I walked in very sweet, and I was eight year
Speaker 2: old boy pushing his bike and said, excuse me, I've
Speaker 2: been a very naughty boy. And the policeman looked at
Speaker 2: what have you done, sonny, And I said, well, I'm
Speaker 2: allowed to go cycle five hours and I've become too
Speaker 2: far and it's four o'clock and I can't get home.
Speaker 2: And he said, oh, well, my colleague is driving down
Speaker 2: to London half an hour. He'll take you. And they
Speaker 2: put the bike in the truck of the car and
Speaker 2: they drove me down and then he stopped at the
Speaker 2: end of my road so my parents wouldn't see the
Speaker 2: police car. I'd be home by six o'clock. That's coercion.
Speaker 2: Everybody loved little kids in those days. There was no
Speaker 2: There was no feeling that I needed, but protection left
Speaker 2: people get out and live their lives. By eleven or twelve,
Speaker 2: I was going to jazz clubs in London and allowed
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 1: Okay. America in the fifties was burgeoning. Of course, there
Speaker 1: was racism, etc. But economically burgeoning. You talk to people
Speaker 1: in England there were still rations. There might not be chocolate.
Speaker 1: Were you feeling that lack? Were you envying America? Would
Speaker 1: you do only realized it was bad when it got good?
Speaker 1: What was your mindset back then in the fifties.
Speaker 2: I don't think America came into our thinking much. That.
Speaker 2: Having said that, I remember in my scenes, I got
Speaker 2: quite good at making money when I was eleven or
Speaker 2: twelve the music business. I started in the music business
Speaker 2: at eleven. I joined the church chop. The local church
Speaker 2: had a choir, and if you sang in the church
Speaker 2: service on a Sunday you got penny. You could be
Speaker 2: the morning service or the evening service, you got one penny.
Speaker 2: But where you made money is when there were weddings.
Speaker 2: And on Saturdays there were weddings, and if you were
Speaker 2: in the choir for the wedding, you could get a shilling.
Speaker 2: And I was quite good, and I got to sing
Speaker 2: the solo one week, and for singing the solo at
Speaker 2: the wedding, you've got two shots, and they gave me
Speaker 2: six months tips. So I want to put it in
Speaker 2: new money because it's still in his sense, but it's
Speaker 2: quite good money then. And I remember one time, so
Speaker 2: I sang this out as well. So let me sing
Speaker 2: the sellar. So now I was thinking weddings. There was
Speaker 2: the there's two weddings on a Saturday. You had to
Speaker 2: go to the Sunday service to be allowed to do
Speaker 2: the wedding. So it was an hour and Sunday at
Speaker 2: the service for a penny, and then two weddings of
Speaker 2: a Sunday for four shillings, and then you get a
Speaker 2: little bit tips, so five shillings. This is good money.
Speaker 2: This is double what most kids would get for pocket money.
Speaker 2: And then one day I had a cold and the
Speaker 2: choir master was very strict. If you had a cold,
Speaker 2: you must tell him and you you wouldn't be allowed
Speaker 2: to sing. Everybody get the cold. And I didn't tell him,
Speaker 2: and the solo sang it was the Lord's My Shepherd,
Speaker 2: the Stanford version, which ends on a high note. Little
Speaker 2: chorus to boy goes up to this very high note,
Speaker 2: and I got my voice cracked with then some network
Speaker 2: pulled off the high note despite the crack, and everything's
Speaker 2: finished beautiful, and no mag the young couple getting married,
Speaker 2: you know, thought, oh God, a beautiful solo at our
Speaker 2: wedding's going to be terrible, and then no, it wasn't.
Speaker 2: It was beautiful. I finished with the lovely note, and
Speaker 2: they gave me five shillings tip. That's a double a
Speaker 2: whole week's pocket and just for the tip. So every
Speaker 2: time I sang the solo in Future, I always cracked
Speaker 2: on the last note and then brought it right. So
Speaker 2: I made a lot of money and then my voice broke,
Speaker 2: So that was the end of that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you were going to school, Were you popular? Were
Speaker 1: you a lonerre you're a good student? Were you involved
Speaker 1: in sports? What was that like?
Speaker 2: Nah? I wasn't. I wasn't popular or unpopular. I'd been
Speaker 2: my parents because of my father's precumia politics. Income had
Speaker 2: gone up and down. He was a documentary film director
Speaker 2: and that was a pretty left wing sort of job,
Speaker 2: so it didn't matter that he was passionately Communist, and
Speaker 2: of course he confusably he talked posh. I mean, he
Speaker 2: sounded like, you know, he just came out of Oxford University.
Speaker 2: But things went up and down a bit financially, and
Speaker 2: I started off after the war. Who came up to London.
Speaker 2: I went to a very prosh private prep school and
Speaker 2: then after a year the money ran out, so I
Speaker 2: was sent to the local government school, which was horrific
Speaker 2: for me. It was horrific, and I ride with the
Speaker 2: wrong accent, because accents in England at everything, you know,
Speaker 2: way more important than America. So they said, you know,
Speaker 2: what's your what's your name? And I said that Napier Bell.
Speaker 2: And that was after the toilet with me head down,
Speaker 2: the toilet kicked my ass flash of the toilet until
Speaker 2: I could so I was not your bell, Simon, not
Speaker 2: your bell. But then everything's all right then for a while.
Speaker 2: And then my dad made some more money and they
Speaker 2: decided I ought to go to a private school again
Speaker 2: because my education was getting had so arrived at the
Speaker 2: private school and they say, what's your name? I said, Simon,
Speaker 2: not your bell, and back off the toilet. You know,
Speaker 2: posh kids is just as nasty naster kids. And very
Speaker 2: soon I'd managed to become Simon Napier Bell. Okay, so
Speaker 2: you change your accent all the time. So the time
Speaker 2: I got to public school, I'd done that four times.
Speaker 2: Public school being of course private school, the boarding school,
Speaker 2: and so I'd learned to fit in. So I was
Speaker 2: never liked or disliked. I was not aware of friends
Speaker 2: being naturally friends in the most cases, just you knew
Speaker 2: how to I knew how to avoid having my butt kicked.
Speaker 2: And that's sort of about being nice to people but
Speaker 2: not really liking them. And I think I didn't have
Speaker 2: much of who I liked or disliked it. There's just
Speaker 2: who might kick my butt and who wouldn't you know,
Speaker 2: and then the ones who would how to avoid them,
Speaker 2: making them do it and make them like the actual friends.
Speaker 2: I probably only had two of three that I said
Speaker 2: were real friends, and we're still friends after school when
Speaker 2: I left, And I guess sure surely set me in
Speaker 2: a good stead for being a manager. You know where
Speaker 2: you've got to give the absolute middle ground between the
Speaker 2: record company, which is rapacious corporate money making and the
Speaker 2: artist who sort of wants to have a more delicate
Speaker 2: sensitivity and create music was excellent training. The best managers
Speaker 2: all seemed to come from some sort of training in
Speaker 2: being middle ground. I mean, being gay too, is something
Speaker 2: where you learn to present to faces just for your
Speaker 2: own security. And or Miles Copeland, who is wonderful background
Speaker 2: because his dad was the guy who invented CIA and
Speaker 2: you said all over the world. So Miles every single
Speaker 2: year found himself at a new school and a new
Speaker 2: country with a language, and so he was so good
Speaker 2: at making sure kids accepted him and you could get
Speaker 2: in without getting hurt. It turned out to be a
Speaker 2: brilliant manager.
Speaker 1: What came first, Your career is a trumpeter or your
Speaker 1: career in the film business?
Speaker 2: Trumpeter. I was obsessed with jazz. I got a trumpet
Speaker 2: for Christmas month. My brother got a trumpet for Christmas
Speaker 2: and couldn't learn it, didn't even try to learn it.
Speaker 2: Gave it to me. And at pop music we're talking
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty one, pop music was appalling. It was all
Speaker 2: it was all Mitch Mitchell's stuff. It was dreadful. You
Speaker 2: know how much is that doggy in the window? And
Speaker 2: I've known you were coming out of bakeder cake and
Speaker 2: it was horrible, sentimental, gimmicky music. And I hated it,
Speaker 2: but sort of like music, and I didn't know what
Speaker 2: to like. And then someone turned me onto jazz, and
Speaker 2: I can the same time I was given this trumpet,
Speaker 2: so I completely fell in love with jazz, which was
Speaker 2: then trad jazz. So you know Larry Louis Armstrong hot
Speaker 2: five what seven classic jazz records, And then at that
Speaker 2: stage in England, there was a big boost in traditional jazz.
Speaker 2: There were amongst all this terrible American style sentimental pop
Speaker 2: and its English cover versions, there were three jazz mans
Speaker 2: who were doing very well in the popular music Chris
Speaker 2: Barbera aka Built and Kenny Ball three Bees. And I
Speaker 2: like that. I like jazz and kids, if they liked
Speaker 2: music at all, really that's what they liked, because the
Speaker 2: sentimental music wasn't for them. But there was no There
Speaker 2: was no music amongst teenagers and those. It wasn't something
Speaker 2: teenagers felt. A part of music was that for adults,
Speaker 2: apart perhaps from the trad jazz. So I fell in
Speaker 2: love with that. I learned everything was to learn about jazz.
Speaker 2: Dozens of jazz records and books, and I read more
Speaker 2: than anything else. I probably read as much as I listened.
Speaker 2: I just loved the books on jazz. I had every
Speaker 2: book there wasn't jazz, and I could tell you anything.
Speaker 2: I mean I can't remember anything now that I could
Speaker 2: tell you know what? What? What? What? The engineer at
Speaker 2: the session when Louis Orstone's Hot five recorded this that
Speaker 2: I was wearing and knew all about it. And then
Speaker 2: bit by bit got to like modern jazz and liked
Speaker 2: it even better and completely passionate about modern jazz. So
Speaker 2: by the time I left school, my idea was to
Speaker 2: be a jazz musician. I figured to be a jazz position,
Speaker 2: that I had to come to America. Somehow I get
Speaker 2: to America as the first problem, and then I had
Speaker 2: to become black. I wasn't sure how I was going
Speaker 2: to do that, but you know, I had this idea,
Speaker 2: and I was a good teenage idea. I was going
Speaker 2: to America. I was going to come a top black
Speaker 2: jazz position. Then I got to America, it wasn't so easy.
Speaker 2: I couldn't actually work in America, so I had to
Speaker 2: go work in Canada because we couldn't get a green
Speaker 2: card in America for that. But I managed to emigrate
Speaker 2: to Canada, and I used to come every weekend come
Speaker 2: down to New York if I when I was in
Speaker 2: Toronto and listened to jazz and jazz pubs in New York,
Speaker 2: and it was my whole world was obsessed with jazz.
Speaker 2: And I had found the sad truth that to earn
Speaker 2: a living as a trumpet player or any other musician,
Speaker 2: it wasn't jazz. They didn't earn the living there that
Speaker 2: even the great jazz editions I'd worshiped and had their
Speaker 2: records in my room. While as a kids, most of
Speaker 2: them that was a hobby. Most learned their money playing
Speaker 2: in other bands, apart from very few, and so I
Speaker 2: worked in a dockside tabn much like the Beatles didn't
Speaker 2: have it. I worked in a strip club, and I
Speaker 2: learned all the pop songs of the day because that's
Speaker 2: what had to be played. And then this was an
Speaker 2: extraordinary thing. Ten years had passed since I first introduced
Speaker 2: at pop and how bad it was. I learned that
Speaker 2: the pop songs of the day, now we're talking nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty were very good, very well constructed, very interesting songs.
Speaker 2: You listened to Frank Sinartis type someone kind of fly
Speaker 2: with Me, you listen to Fat's Domino bluesy, jazzy influenced,
Speaker 2: and I rather fell in love with pop.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you get in the film business?
Speaker 2: Well, my dad was a documentary film director. So when
Speaker 2: I went back to Indian when I finally gave up
Speaker 2: trying to be a musician and realized I was not
Speaker 2: going to be the greatest jazz position in the world.
Speaker 2: Could only just earn a living playing average trumpet. I
Speaker 2: got back to England and films seemed to be the
Speaker 2: obvious thing to get into because because of what he'd done,
Speaker 2: I know how to I knew how it worked, you know.
Speaker 2: Even when I was a kid. I used to go
Speaker 2: out on location with him and do the clapperboard or
Speaker 2: even the film in the magazine camera. And I've worked
Speaker 2: a bit the cutting rooms with him. So I went
Speaker 2: back to England and managed to get a job in
Speaker 2: the film industry as an assistant film editor. And that
Speaker 2: was good because it was well paid and it put
Speaker 2: me amongst affable, nice, intellectual thinking people.
Speaker 1: So what drove you into the music business?
Speaker 2: Well drove me I prior to going to America, I
Speaker 2: had had a job after I left stool Them. Before
Speaker 2: I went to America's position, I'd got a job as
Speaker 2: Johnny Dankworth's band. And Johnny Dankworth was a big band,
Speaker 2: and in the ninety fifties the equivalent of rock groups
Speaker 2: were big bands. I mean there were probably thirty or
Speaker 2: forty quite well known big bands, twelve to fifteen musicians, trumpet, brass,
Speaker 2: sack section touring round UK, and one of the best
Speaker 2: known Wasjohnny Dank, which was the most jazz influence band,
Speaker 2: and I'd got a job as band boy, which is roady.
Speaker 2: But they had a tour manager and a band boy.
Speaker 2: See he had infected one roady at one tour manager
Speaker 2: and you did all the hard work. You carried the
Speaker 2: drums up three flights of stairs to a flat no empire,
Speaker 2: and you set them up on stage and packed it
Speaker 2: to when the bus rolled the joints. So what I'd
Speaker 2: loved about that job, and they were never I was
Speaker 2: hopefully they're going to let me play trumpet in the band.
Speaker 2: Of course that didn't happen. But what I loved about
Speaker 2: the job was in the bus every night going home,
Speaker 2: they gossip and the music business gossip, which I really liked.
Speaker 2: I thought, this is I want to be part of this.
Speaker 2: So when I came back and worked in the film industry,
Speaker 2: I was always thinking how nice it would be to
Speaker 2: to somehow involve that get involved with that music business
Speaker 2: gossip i'd heard. And when I started making quite good
Speaker 2: money in the film industry, I started going to the
Speaker 2: trendy clubs. It was middle of swinging London, and I
Speaker 2: started meeting a lot of music business people and two
Speaker 2: or three in the morning, I'd have to go home
Speaker 2: because I had to be up and be in the
Speaker 2: cutting rooms the next morning. And they'd all stay on,
Speaker 2: you know. I'd say, how come you even stay on?
Speaker 2: And they say, oh, the music business, you can go
Speaker 2: to work when you want. And I thought, that's this
Speaker 2: is a good business. I'm going to have to get
Speaker 2: into this. And so I was looking for opportunities and
Speaker 2: I've met this girl. We had a hugely good relationship
Speaker 2: with Vicky Wickham. She was one of the booking agent
Speaker 2: the booking producers for Already sterdy Go, which was the
Speaker 2: television teenage program in the UK the music and we
Speaker 2: have enormous good friends and one day she one day
Speaker 2: she turned up and said, Dusty Springfield, who was a
Speaker 2: friend of hers, has just come back from Italy with
Speaker 2: a with a song she wants to record in English.
Speaker 2: It's an Italian song and how does she get lyrics
Speaker 2: for it? And I said, why don't we write them?
Speaker 2: And Vicky he said, well, because we've never written lyrics
Speaker 2: before as well throwing ever bothersly let's do. And so
Speaker 2: we sat down and wrote the lyrics. Took an hour
Speaker 2: or two and that was you don't have to say
Speaker 2: you love me. So suddenly I was sort of in
Speaker 2: the music business. The number one hit. And then the Yardbirds,
Speaker 2: who were the third biggest group in the world after
Speaker 2: the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, got fed up with
Speaker 2: their manager because they never made their money or he
Speaker 2: never gave them any money, and they asked VICKI, who
Speaker 2: would she recommend to manage them? And she recommended me,
Speaker 2: And so suddenly I had a call one day saying,
Speaker 2: this is the Yardbird said, would you like to manage us? Yes? Please.
Speaker 2: I love doing things I haven't done before, trying new things.
Speaker 2: So suddenly, completely in over my head, I was managing
Speaker 2: the Yardbirds, who've all been in the business five years,
Speaker 2: were brilliant musicians, had four or five hit records, three
Speaker 2: number one records, and I was their manager. It's really
Speaker 2: flying by the city of pants, But I did, you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes not knowing what you're doing, it's a big advantage.
Speaker 2: Because they wanted money. That was the first thing I
Speaker 2: went out and had done with them. They said, we've
Speaker 2: got no money, but had four number ones. We haven't
Speaker 2: got any money at all. We drive around to gigs
Speaker 2: and this terrible old car and we're all living with
Speaker 2: our parents still, which is absurd. And so I went
Speaker 2: off to EMI, which is their record company, and I
Speaker 2: told them very arrogantly, and I was I was twenty four,
Speaker 2: twenty five. I was full of myself, quite quite sort
Speaker 2: of appity, nasty, nasty, young chap. And I went into
Speaker 2: EMI and I told them, your contract's not valid with
Speaker 2: the others because it was made through their manager, and
Speaker 2: so when they stopped being managed by him, he signed
Speaker 2: a contract with you, not them, so it's not valid.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure if they thought that was right.
Speaker 2: They talked with their lawyers, but they were sufficiently afraid
Speaker 2: that I might be right. But they said, well, we're
Speaker 2: negotiating a new contract. And I had no idea what
Speaker 2: do you negotiate? I mean, this is the advantage of
Speaker 2: not know. I didn't know what the parameters were. If
Speaker 2: I had done, I have asked a lot, but not
Speaker 2: beyond the parameters. But I didn't, so I just sort
Speaker 2: of worked out my head what a records cost, having it?
Speaker 2: Did they sell? Just take a percentage of that? And
Speaker 2: I asked for a ridiculous amount of money and a
Speaker 2: high percentage, way beyond anything they could possibly play and
Speaker 2: they paid it. So I got the yard bloods. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's only twenty five thousand pounds, but they'd only ever
Speaker 2: paid the Beatles five thousand pounds. And I got a
Speaker 2: royalty higher than the Beatles royalty because I didn't know,
Speaker 2: and they didn't know. I didn't know, so they thought,
Speaker 2: you know, the kid's come in here and get a stirrus.
Speaker 2: Of course, later on I love they were only giving
Speaker 2: us an advance on our own pipeline money. It was
Speaker 2: you learn, but I did well, so the others are
Speaker 2: pleased with that. So suddenly I was quite a good manager.
Speaker 2: But then you know, I made a terrible mistake coming
Speaker 2: home from a gig from we were in Paris. We
Speaker 2: were walking back from the gig with Paul sam Smith,
Speaker 2: who was the base player, and Paul said to me,
Speaker 2: you know the thing I hate most of the whole
Speaker 2: I really hate life work. I just can't stand it.
Speaker 2: I hate traveling, I hate hotels, I hate being on stage,
Speaker 2: I hate the girls screaming. I hate it. And I
Speaker 2: didn't know that. Absolutely the first principal, most important job
Speaker 2: of manager has is to keep your group together. There's
Speaker 2: nothing more important. That's the one first golden rule of
Speaker 2: being a manager keep your group together. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that rule. So when he said he hated her, I said, oh,
Speaker 2: you poor chap Pell for doing something you don't like.
Speaker 2: You know, you should leave. We'll find somebody else. Don't worry,
Speaker 2: and off he went. So I now I was managing
Speaker 2: the third biggest rock group in the world. World was
Speaker 2: no bass player, and what an idiot I was, Except
Speaker 2: it worked out all right because I talked to the
Speaker 2: group and they suggested a guitar player. They knew who
Speaker 2: I happened to know because I'd been making demos of
Speaker 2: songs I've been trying to write, and when I use
Speaker 2: session musicians, I always booked this guitarist and he was
Speaker 2: called Jimmy Page. But he was a session guitarist. He
Speaker 2: played pop music. He played on all Herman Simon's records.
Speaker 2: He played them the guitar servers you know from pop records.
Speaker 2: And they all say he's a good guitar guitarist, bring
Speaker 2: him in, And I said, you know, he is good.
Speaker 2: And Jeff Beck and him were quite good friends. And
Speaker 2: Jeff was yardless guitarist, brilliant, the brilliant rock guitarist in Britain,
Speaker 2: and they all said bring him in and I said,
Speaker 2: but he won't play bass, and they said, yes he will.
Speaker 2: He's a good guy. So I went and talked to
Speaker 2: Jimmy and he said, yeah, I come in. I'll play bass,
Speaker 2: but I knew he wouldn't. And the second or third
Speaker 2: gig in, he walked across the stage and handed his
Speaker 2: bass to Chris, the rhythm guitarists, and took the Chris's
Speaker 2: guitar and that was it. Now we had two lead guitarists.
Speaker 2: And for a while or sometimes I would say, and
Speaker 2: some nights this was totally brilliant. They stood either side
Speaker 2: of the stage. There were no mixing desks in those days.
Speaker 2: What you heard when you went to a gig came
Speaker 2: off the stage. You were listed for the amps coming
Speaker 2: off the stage with no mix And so they stood
Speaker 2: either side of the station and they played all the
Speaker 2: solos they already knew Jeff solos from the records. They
Speaker 2: played them in unison, which gave a stereo effect which
Speaker 2: you couldn't get any other way than actually have two
Speaker 2: guitarists because there were no mixing desks, and it was
Speaker 2: enormously impacted. I mean two they had stature, they knew
Speaker 2: how to stand and play a guitar, push themselves into
Speaker 2: the audience. And I booked them a tour with the
Speaker 2: Rolling Stones, so the Stones supported by the Yards, and
Speaker 2: there were many nights on the tour when the Yardbods
Speaker 2: stole the show. They really had a tremendous force and energy.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, they weren't happy because, you know,
Speaker 2: Jimmy was having to play Jeff's solos, so he wasn't
Speaker 2: his own thing, and Jeff was now sharing the limelight
Speaker 2: with Jimmy, so they were There were good nights and
Speaker 2: bad nights, and they got they got less and less
Speaker 2: happy with it. And then I got them into a
Speaker 2: movie blow up which was seen all over the world.
Speaker 2: And I pulled that off by a stroke of you know,
Speaker 2: I'm just a blagger. Really, I'm just I talk about scams,
Speaker 2: but that's how music industry works. I was having dinner
Speaker 2: one night with my friend Kit Lambert, who managed the
Speaker 2: Who My Now Who had come up and they were
Speaker 2: probably the fourth or fifth biggest group, and he was
Speaker 2: a film but kid had also been in the film industry.
Speaker 2: He worked in the cutting rooms and as a director,
Speaker 2: and I was having dinner one night with him, and
Speaker 2: he said, Antoni and his town and an Tonieri was
Speaker 2: just hugely famous Italian film director. And I'd seen all
Speaker 2: his films because my dad when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: had maybe go and see all these Italian films. And
Speaker 2: Kit said, he wants the Who to be in it's
Speaker 2: a film about Swinging London. He wants the Who to
Speaker 2: be in the film. And I was jealous. I mean
Speaker 2: I wanted to go and Santierny. I want my group
Speaker 2: to be in the film. And so Kit said that
Speaker 2: he loves them because he lies to the destroyer equipment.
Speaker 2: It's kneehelistic and that's going to go with this. Well,
Speaker 2: how he sees Swinging London's niehelistic image. And so I
Speaker 2: said to Kit, look that only the Who can do this,
Speaker 2: So don't undersell. You've got to ask for ten thousand
Speaker 2: pounds minimum. Remember I was talking about a shilling a
Speaker 2: week for pocket money. Ten thousand pounds is like asking
Speaker 2: two hundred three hundred thousand pounds now asked for ten
Speaker 2: thousand pounds. And tell him this is your group. You
Speaker 2: want editing control of that sequence. And Kit was all
Speaker 2: fired up. He said, I will I will, and he did,
Speaker 2: and Antoni only just threw him out of the meeting
Speaker 2: just like that. And I was on the phone. However, Spantoni,
Speaker 2: only you know what about my group, the Yardards. So
Speaker 2: I went along to see him with his suite in
Speaker 2: the Savoy Hotel and I explained that this smashing equipment,
Speaker 2: which the who did really that was the Yardbirds did that.
Speaker 2: The Yarbords did that. Originally they were the absolute masters
Speaker 2: of smashing equipment. And then who stole it and it
Speaker 2: became their actor. We thought, oh, well, if they wanted
Speaker 2: to do it, we've done it for long enough. Now
Speaker 2: we'll move onto something else. But actually, when it comes
Speaker 2: to smashing equipment, we really we know, we know that
Speaker 2: we taught them. And he said, oh, that's that's pretty good. Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm interested in And he said how about money? I
Speaker 2: said money. I said, we don't, we don't want paying
Speaker 2: you're you know, you're the greatest film direction in the world.
Speaker 2: Appear in one of your films. We can't ask for
Speaker 2: money for that. And then he said editing. And I said, editing,
Speaker 2: you be ashamed to even talk about with you. I
Speaker 2: saw your films when I was eleven years old, you're
Speaker 2: the master of filmmaking, and so we got the part,
Speaker 2: and that was really good for all of the world.
Speaker 2: Of the Yards were seen as playing in the Marque Club,
Speaker 2: being the big group of three another. Okay, how did.
Speaker 1: This affect your relationship with Kit Limbert?
Speaker 2: Do you know where? You were best friends all our
Speaker 2: lives and everything I did is what he would have
Speaker 2: done to me, you know, and we did we we
Speaker 2: did things to each other like that. After that. I
Speaker 2: had a group later on called John's Children, and I
Speaker 2: went on tour with them with the who we we
Speaker 2: enjoyed doing. I mean, that was all part of being
Speaker 2: a manager. He was the most extraordinary, vital, crazy guy
Speaker 2: I ever knew. I'm probably the most intelligent. And I
Speaker 2: can't remember it affecting a rusship at all. I mean
Speaker 2: we probably had dinner again the next week. I don't
Speaker 2: remember if we did, but we certainly never fell out.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. What was your line of bs
Speaker 1: that The Yardbirds, who were established act had a guy
Speaker 1: Georgio who had been a club owner, so you could say, okay,
Speaker 1: it was music business adjacent, but you're nowhere. How did
Speaker 1: they decide to.
Speaker 2: Go with you? Well, I jumped a story the hard
Speaker 2: time We've got. But after I met Vicki and we
Speaker 2: wrote the words so you know how to say it up.
Speaker 2: She said you ought to be a manager, and I
Speaker 2: thought that's a good idea. So I put together a group.
Speaker 2: I invented a group. It was a young girl, very cute,
Speaker 2: eighteen nineteen year old, a black girl who was from Jamaica,
Speaker 2: who I I'd used I was working in films that
Speaker 2: I had to find a girl to sing a television commercial,
Speaker 2: and I'd interviewed or auditioned a whole lot of kids,
Speaker 2: and she was one of the ones I auditioned. So
Speaker 2: she sang beautiful and I had kept her name. And
Speaker 2: there was a young guy I knew who was about
Speaker 2: the same age and the same height. He was blonde
Speaker 2: and a very pretty looking and he danced awfully well.
Speaker 2: You'd see him in clubs or was around town dancing
Speaker 2: and moving really really well, very cute. And I thought,
Speaker 2: if I'd put these two people together, it would be
Speaker 2: an amazing image. A very blonde, pale skinned guy and
Speaker 2: he's just black girl, and they're the same height. They
Speaker 2: always black brothers and sisters or twins or something and
Speaker 2: he'd be a very striking image. I knew that image
Speaker 2: was going to be striking, But what I didn't know
Speaker 2: is there had never been a mixed race act in England. Ever.
Speaker 2: There had been black singers who sang with white dance fans,
Speaker 2: but there had never been a actual mixed race act.
Speaker 2: It just never occurred to me. I presume they hadn't
Speaker 2: been in America either, I don't know, but England they hadn't.
Speaker 2: And so I put this act together and it was
Speaker 2: definitely a striking image just because of it. They looked
Speaker 2: so great and a black and white thing looked and
Speaker 2: I got a top photographer, I don't know it was,
Speaker 2: but one of the top photographers to take a beautiful
Speaker 2: portrait of them, and it was this is absurdity and
Speaker 2: how you can play games with people. It was naked
Speaker 2: from the shoulders up, so it was from there, literally
Speaker 2: from the shoulders up, and there was only flesh to
Speaker 2: be seen, but just below there was normal clothes. But
Speaker 2: what you saw was a black and a white face
Speaker 2: with shoulders black and white shoulders. And it was a
Speaker 2: couple of beautiful pictures and I picked the best one,
Speaker 2: and I had a big four by what the big
Speaker 2: A five size which is double you know, the big
Speaker 2: the big size picture twenty eight twenty by sixteen, and
Speaker 2: I had this blown up, had one hundred of them
Speaker 2: blown up on hard card and put into a big
Speaker 2: envelope and then I went made a record with them,
Speaker 2: which is a silly song which I wrote myself. I
Speaker 2: was ready, I was already taking everything. I actually got
Speaker 2: some good people and I didn't. I did it myself,
Speaker 2: wrote my song, wrote this on myself, got a good
Speaker 2: arranger in made an arrangement of it, made a record
Speaker 2: with them, and it had a sort of nice, noisy,
Speaker 2: brassy effect. In fact, I pinched the baseline of get
Speaker 2: Off My Cloud and put it onto Trombones and it
Speaker 2: was a good bouncy record and went along to EM
Speaker 2: I persuaded them to release it, and then I put
Speaker 2: that record into an envelope with this huge photograph and
Speaker 2: sent it to every DJ and producer and everybody in
Speaker 2: the country who had a show anything. And records were
Speaker 2: sold on television and not on radio shows. Radio didn't
Speaker 2: play many records. There was Parrot radio, but the BBC
Speaker 2: didn't play records, and so you dependent on television performances
Speaker 2: and I knew because we had a postal service in
Speaker 2: those days that at six o'clock the next morning, every
Speaker 2: single one of those people I said it to would
Speaker 2: get woken up by the post because it wouldn't go
Speaker 2: through the postposts because the thing was too wide, and
Speaker 2: you know, everyone to get woken up. Sorry, GUF wouldn't
Speaker 2: go through the let's sorry to wake you up. But
Speaker 2: that was it. They were going to get that, they're
Speaker 2: going to look at it. And then I just behaved despicably.
Speaker 2: I really was revolting. I called every one of them, so,
Speaker 2: are you going to play the record? And they said no.
Speaker 2: And of course there were hundreds of singles coming out
Speaker 2: every week. There were new records every week, just the
Speaker 2: major artists alone, that people are having hits, the stones
Speaker 2: and people were enough records to fill every possible slot
Speaker 2: in every TV show and airwave, and so they always
Speaker 2: made their polite comments that I'm terribly sorry and love
Speaker 2: the song beautiful picture I haven't got and I just said,
Speaker 2: you're racious, isn't it? Because she's black and he's white,
Speaker 2: and and most TV producers and DJs, we've got pretty
Speaker 2: liberal people. And I doubt if you'd have found one
Speaker 2: racist amongst the whole bunch of them. But so I said,
Speaker 2: I was very pretty nasty, and they all denied they were,
Speaker 2: and they all played it. We got five television shows
Speaker 2: and it went in the charts, and that's where the
Speaker 2: Arbor said, oh, we want this guy to managers.
Speaker 1: How did it end with the yard Birds?
Speaker 2: Not? Well, what happened is in America. After they'd done
Speaker 2: the tour of the Rolling Stones, they went off to America,
Speaker 2: Jeff and Jimmy began not to get on very well,
Speaker 2: and Jeff left halfway through the tour, and and so
Speaker 2: that left four piece group who totally capable of playing
Speaker 2: all the music because they didn't really Jeff and Jimmy
Speaker 2: are playing in And so we had a four piece group,
Speaker 2: and Jimmy began to exert himself very much what he wanted,
Speaker 2: how he wanted to be. He wanted to change the
Speaker 2: name of the group. The new yard Birds didn't seem
Speaker 2: to matter much. But I also couldn't release the point
Speaker 2: of it, and he wanted to bring in different people,
Speaker 2: and bit by bit I could see this was going
Speaker 2: to be Jimmy's group. And I didn't really mind. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was I'd done the stupid thing of getting rid
Speaker 2: of the key person. Paul Sammlesworth may have only been
Speaker 2: the best player, but he was the original person behind
Speaker 2: the group, and once he'd gone, despite Jeff being a
Speaker 2: wall of a guitarist, it was Paul who drove the group.
Speaker 2: And I was so stupid, you know, that I'd let
Speaker 2: him go and Jimmy was now the dominant person in
Speaker 2: the group and it was going to be Jimmy's group,
Speaker 2: And that was the way it went. I mean, I
Speaker 2: just decided I didn't want to bother with it. It
Speaker 2: was too much fighting and arguing, so so I went
Speaker 2: along to Mickey Well. I discussed it, but it was
Speaker 2: quite amicable because at the time I just got with them.
Speaker 2: If I don't manage you, who's going to produce you?
Speaker 2: Because I've been producing them as well. It's the other
Speaker 2: thing i'd done when I started managing was I went
Speaker 2: straight and produced their first album, and I didn't know
Speaker 2: much about that either, but I was lucky it turned
Speaker 2: out turned out pretty good. But then they knew how
Speaker 2: to produce themselves, so I said, well, at List, I
Speaker 2: better get your producer, and they all thought Mickey most
Speaker 2: would be a good idea because he produced the animals,
Speaker 2: and Jimmy liked Mickey Most because Jimmy had made all
Speaker 2: the Home and Silence records with him. So we went
Speaker 2: up to see Mickey Most and Mickey said, yeah, he'd
Speaker 2: like to produce the art buds. Who's going to balage you?
Speaker 2: And I said, I'm quite happy to give it up
Speaker 2: if you want someone else to manage them. And Nick's
Speaker 2: business partner, well, I guess his protection was Peter Grant,
Speaker 2: and he's well, Peter could do it, and so Peter
Speaker 2: did it. And that's was Liz Zeppelin. So in terms
Speaker 2: of managing the yard person the fact that they ceased
Speaker 2: to exist at the end of my management, so I
Speaker 2: was a failure. On the other hand, led Zeppelin wouldn't
Speaker 2: have existed without this, so perhaps as a plus and
Speaker 2: a minus there. And I kept Jeff Beck. I was
Speaker 2: going to manage Jeff Beck and that went all right
Speaker 2: for a bit, but that was difficult too because he
Speaker 2: Jeff was not Jeff was never interested in the commercial
Speaker 2: side of the music business. He just wanted to play
Speaker 2: his guitar. And I like commerce, I like the Hols
Speaker 2: and strap to the music bersins. I like the idea
Speaker 2: of making a record and trying to make money and
Speaker 2: promote it, making some of the just start and he hated.
Speaker 2: Mickey also made his record High Host silver first single,
Speaker 2: High Host silver Lining, which I thought was a brilliant record.
Speaker 2: I still do today. I love the record, and Jeff
Speaker 2: wouldn't sing it, So you think you have separated Jeff
Speaker 2: from the group. We've got a hit record and Jeff
Speaker 2: refused to perform it. These are very difficult people. Time
Speaker 2: for life to get easier, so I moved on.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is all happened subsequent to the breaking of
Speaker 1: the Beatles. To what degree did the Beatles change the
Speaker 1: music industry, life and attitudes in the UK? And to
Speaker 1: what degree were you conscious.
Speaker 2: Of that the Beatles created the music industry. The music
Speaker 2: industry was a little a small business. Part of that,
Speaker 2: you know. You have to remember until nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 2: the music industry thrives. It made us money selling sheep music,
Speaker 2: not records, and the top ten every week was the
Speaker 2: top ten best selling pieces of sheet music. The idea
Speaker 2: being you played them a home on the piano and
Speaker 2: the lyrics you sang in the pub, and records were
Speaker 2: secondary to that, and when rock and roll came along,
Speaker 2: sheep music you couldn't make rock and roll playing sheep music.
Speaker 2: And for the first time, records became more important. The
Speaker 2: sound became of the record became more important than the song,
Speaker 2: and so very quickly, within two years, the charts, both
Speaker 2: in America and UK changed from being the top ten
Speaker 2: pieces of sheep music to the top ten records. And
Speaker 2: once the charts were the top ten records, the industry
Speaker 2: completely changed because whereas previously, music publishers would try to
Speaker 2: get as many people many recording artists as possible to
Speaker 2: record their best songs so they had more and more
Speaker 2: chances of selling the sheep music. Now when the chart
Speaker 2: was the records, the publishers wanted only one person to
Speaker 2: record each song because if there were two versions of it,
Speaker 2: it would distill. It would diffuse the amount of records
Speaker 2: being sold. Lets's like to get the chart. So the
Speaker 2: artist became incredibly important. The great a good song was
Speaker 2: taken to one artist, Will you record the song? Nobody
Speaker 2: else can to record it, and that very quickly meant
Speaker 2: that the artist was more important than the song. An
Speaker 2: artist who'd had a big hit with this last record
Speaker 2: would probably get a hit with his next record, even
Speaker 2: if it wasn't a very good song. And very quickly
Speaker 2: you didn't say what songs number one this week? You
Speaker 2: say who is number one this week? And who? Rather
Speaker 2: than what was the moment the industry changed. So by
Speaker 2: the time the sixties came along, who was at the
Speaker 2: top of the charts was the most important question. So
Speaker 2: when the Beatles broke and became so huge and had
Speaker 2: so many hits, often at the same time their name,
Speaker 2: it was not the songs which were talked about. Was
Speaker 2: the Beatles, the Beatles, the Beatles, Who was the key question?
Speaker 2: And them being so huge really meant that the business
Speaker 2: shifted from being not just a sheet news business but
Speaker 2: to being a record business, but a business where you
Speaker 2: sold people. You know, Suddenly people the record industry understood
Speaker 2: that it wasn't even selling It wasn't any sheep news,
Speaker 2: It wasn't even sell any records. It was selling artists.
Speaker 2: And that's never changed since then. The record business is
Speaker 2: about it's an artist business. It's a hit record hit
Speaker 2: artist driven, But record business companies are about artists. Many
Speaker 2: record companies won't even take a one off hit record anymore.
Speaker 2: If they think you're going to one off hit, there's
Speaker 2: nothing to support it in terms of artists. To stop
Speaker 2: worth spending the money promoting it and making it a hit,
Speaker 2: you haven't got something to continue with afterwards. So the
Speaker 2: Beatles were there at that moment, but there were five
Speaker 2: other groups waiting in the wings. You know, something had happened.
Speaker 2: In ninety fifty five there was a record by a
Speaker 2: guy called Nonnie Dolligan called Rock Island Line, which was
Speaker 2: by a skiffle group. A skiffle group was the trad
Speaker 2: jazz bands I mentioned earlier in the intervals. They had
Speaker 2: to have intervals because they blew their lips out in
Speaker 2: forty minutes of playing. So they waved their rhythm sections
Speaker 2: forward and told the rootin section to sing a few songs.
Speaker 2: And the songs they'd sing, because there were New Orleans
Speaker 2: jazz bands, would be New Orleans songs that they sing,
Speaker 2: the songs of Lead Belly and Big Bill brunsee the
Speaker 2: Southern black blues songs. And they call these interval groups
Speaker 2: skiffle groups, and one of them eventually had a hit record.
Speaker 2: And whereas rock and roll from America, kids in England
Speaker 2: like rock and roll, it was like movies. You liked
Speaker 2: a good movie, you saw it, you listened to it,
Speaker 2: but you didn't dispi to it. You didn't think you
Speaker 2: could become that. It was too American, and it was
Speaker 2: too produced, it was too wound up with a huge industry.
Speaker 2: But skiffle was different. Skiffull was just a banjo player
Speaker 2: who played acoustic guitar for the record, and a double
Speaker 2: bass player and somebody banging on a washboard, just one
Speaker 2: of those boards your women used to scrub their clothes
Speaker 2: before washing machines. And when that became a hit, every
Speaker 2: teenager in Ingland wanted to do the same thing. Everyone.
Speaker 2: It was extraordinary. There was a moment of empowerment for
Speaker 2: British teenagers because they had a very drab life. For
Speaker 2: you mentioned that it was rationing and you couldn't get
Speaker 2: chocolates if you wanted it. There was no teenage fashion,
Speaker 2: there was no love of popular music. But suddenly here
Speaker 2: was a British guy who couldn't sing very well. Singing
Speaker 2: with virtually grew. Anyone could form a skiffle group. If
Speaker 2: you could find a guitar, You could make a double
Speaker 2: bass by shoving a broomstick and a box and putting
Speaker 2: a nail on either end and putting one string on
Speaker 2: it and plucking it. You can borry your mother's washboards.
Speaker 2: You had a skiffle group. It was estimated. Within a
Speaker 2: year of that record, it was estimated there were fifty
Speaker 2: thousand teenage skiffle groups in England, and the year before
Speaker 2: that record came out, only five thousand acoustic guitars were
Speaker 2: sold in England and the year after two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand, five thousand sat increase. And all these posicians
Speaker 2: who later became famous, whether it was where it was
Speaker 2: Rick Waitman and John or Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton,
Speaker 2: every one of them started at thirteen fourteen years old
Speaker 2: in akroup. The Beatles were the first. When Paul McCartney
Speaker 2: joined John John already had a skiffle group and that's
Speaker 2: what they called. And a skiffle group was pretty much
Speaker 2: anybody who could play anything or had an instrument, you
Speaker 2: can join great. They were just pick up groups of
Speaker 2: fourteen fifteen run kids playing whatever they had. And by
Speaker 2: the time the Beatles happened, the best of these groups
Speaker 2: have been together for four or five years and they
Speaker 2: some of them made some money and they swapped their
Speaker 2: washboard for drum kits, and their homemade bass guitar for
Speaker 2: an electric for electric bass, acoustic guitar for electric guitar,
Speaker 2: and they music had morphed from country, southern black blues
Speaker 2: to rhythm and blues, and so by the time you
Speaker 2: got to nineteen fifty eight fifty nine sixty, rhythm was
Speaker 2: a wash with incredibly good rhythm and blues groups, I mean,
Speaker 2: playing absolutely as good as American groups, the difference being
Speaker 2: instead of Black American cast you know, cast away from
Speaker 2: society Black Americans, these were teenagers, were white post war
Speaker 2: British teenagers. They were singing American songs. They weren't writing
Speaker 2: their own. But lyrics made something different. With Eric Burdens
Speaker 2: with the animals saying I'm a man, you know, he
Speaker 2: didn't mean you know, I'm maybe black, but I'm still
Speaker 2: a human being. He meant I'm eighteen and I'm horny.
Speaker 2: You know that all the lyrics were given new meanings
Speaker 2: just by different people singing them. And then they started
Speaker 2: writing their own songs. And when they started writing their
Speaker 2: own songs, that was when rock music started. That was
Speaker 2: the beginning of rock music. You know, rock music is
Speaker 2: a totally English thing. It didn't come from America. Rock
Speaker 2: music came from America in the sense it was the
Speaker 2: influence of rhythm and blues and black music, but it
Speaker 2: was British teenagers that turned it into rock music. And
Speaker 2: the Beatles were the first of those groups. But when
Speaker 2: they happened in America wanted more. They were waiting them,
Speaker 2: and there was the Rolling Stones and the Animals and
Speaker 2: the Yards and Manfred Mann who drugs and the Kinks
Speaker 2: just waited all ivn't ready five years of plain to go.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to the lyrics for you Don't Have
Speaker 1: to Say You Love Me and producing the first Yard
Speaker 1: Brewers album, those generate royalties, did you get paid? And
Speaker 1: where are those royalties today?
Speaker 2: Well they've long been eaten and splashed away, is what
Speaker 2: I do? Do you? No?
Speaker 1: My question is do you still own those interests? No?
Speaker 2: Actually, Vicky and I sold our share to BMG about
Speaker 2: seven or eight years ago, as people are doing these days.
Speaker 2: But yes, Look it was a lousy deal because that
Speaker 2: deals were lousy in those days. So the deal we
Speaker 2: got was twelve and a half. The British publisher paid
Speaker 2: us twelve and a half percent of their income the
Speaker 2: song was published in Italy, they made a deal fifty
Speaker 2: to fifty with the British publisher. The British public goers
Speaker 2: twelve and a half percent of work they get, so
Speaker 2: we got twelve and a half cent to fifty to fifty.
Speaker 2: That was the normal deal in that says and then
Speaker 2: Bricky and I split that twelve and a half percent
Speaker 2: and then that never got changed. I mean, that was
Speaker 2: the deal went around the world. It was still quite
Speaker 2: a lot of money. I mean, it was nice money
Speaker 2: to have coming in every month. On the good side,
Speaker 2: it never changed and it's still paid. On the bad
Speaker 2: side today we'd got four times as much money. Every
Speaker 2: time you Don't Have to Say You Love Me was
Speaker 2: sung in English anywhere in the world. The writer of
Speaker 2: the Italian lyric got twice as much money as we
Speaker 2: did for the lyrics just being sung. So that's how
Speaker 2: these things go. But about ten years ago we sold
Speaker 2: our share to EMI. And you know when you read
Speaker 2: about people selling their catalogs, and every week we read
Speaker 2: it SOMEDI are selling a catalog and they said they
Speaker 2: sold their rights. They're not selling their rights. Their rights
Speaker 2: are already with the publishing companies who rouginally signed them.
Speaker 2: What they're selling is their flow of income, the flow
Speaker 2: of the writer's income, the income they get from the
Speaker 2: publisher for the writer's ship. That's what they sell, and
Speaker 2: then thereafter the publisher doesn't have to pay money income.
Speaker 2: And we sold that. We did quite a good deal
Speaker 2: for it, about what it was worth we at the time.
Speaker 2: For what we got, i'd said we'd have to live
Speaker 2: another twelve years to regret it. We've got as much
Speaker 2: as we'd definitly get in twelve years after that we'd
Speaker 2: wish we hadn't sold it. Well, we've both lived another
Speaker 2: twelve years, so hopefully we'll die soon and then we
Speaker 2: won't have to regret it.
Speaker 1: Was it BMG or EMI?
Speaker 2: BMG?
Speaker 1: Okay, So how did you ultimately get involved with WIAM?
Speaker 2: Ultimately? Uh, WHAM came after Japan. I'd spent seven years
Speaker 2: managing Japan, taking them from completely impossible to get a
Speaker 2: deal with to probably being the most influential important group
Speaker 2: in rock in Europe for British and Europe, not America.
Speaker 2: And then they broke up and I thought, as enough,
Speaker 2: I don't think I really want to do much more.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't want to manage the other group.
Speaker 2: But it's time to write books. I'm get to go
Speaker 2: to Asia and write books. And before I could go,
Speaker 2: I was a knock on the door and a guy
Speaker 2: called Jazz Summers, who was also a manager was there.
Speaker 2: And still somebody suggested I come and see you, and
Speaker 2: I think we get on well and we ought to
Speaker 2: manage together. He had had a group called Blue Zoo,
Speaker 2: not not big by Japan, but they'd had number one
Speaker 2: record and they've broken up and he was a bit
Speaker 2: pissed off with that. So we had something in common there,
Speaker 2: but I immediately didn't get on with And this is
Speaker 2: a guy who was not on my wavelength, you know
Speaker 2: he was. He was very aggressive, very confrontational. He spoke
Speaker 2: deliberately down market, so he sounded pretty you know in
Speaker 2: London and rough Later on I found that was part
Speaker 2: of an act from him. But someone had a friend
Speaker 2: of mutual friend that suggested he come and see me
Speaker 2: in I thought we just to beliked to our mutual friend.
Speaker 2: Let's try, so I said, let's go and have lunch.
Speaker 2: I went around the road to the corners, the local
Speaker 2: Chinese restaurant, and then halfway through lunch, I found he
Speaker 2: could speak Chinese, so I thought, well, okay, he's not
Speaker 2: not quite the person I thought he wants already knocked
Speaker 2: on the door. Cantonies and his father had been in
Speaker 2: the army, so he was brought up in an army background,
Speaker 2: and they'd lived in Hong Kong when he was a kid.
Speaker 2: Learned Cantonese, and he was a pretty clever, knowledgeable, thoughtful,
Speaker 2: well read guy and didn't really have to speak the
Speaker 2: way he spoke. It was sort of like a defense
Speaker 2: in a tough world, you know. And we became incredibly
Speaker 2: good friends. I'm in extraordinary good friends, and really learned
Speaker 2: to work together in a clever way because I'm really
Speaker 2: somebody who have voiced confrontation will always find a way
Speaker 2: to solve a problem and be diplomatic, and he is
Speaker 2: a person who can't stand that waste of time. And
Speaker 2: so we learned when to use each other to solve problems,
Speaker 2: which was needed.
Speaker 1: Okay, Jazz, who I did not know, talk to a
Speaker 1: bit whatever, did not have a good reputation. Jazz is
Speaker 1: six feet under. I don't know whether they was cremated
Speaker 1: or buried.
Speaker 2: What was the real story there, Jazz, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: real story. His dad was tough, rerigically tough. His dad.
Speaker 2: One day, Jazz was coming home from school when he
Speaker 2: was six years old, and two guys, older boys forty
Speaker 2: eight year old, came up to him with a bit
Speaker 2: of trained partner started hitting him and beating him up,
Speaker 2: and just at that moment, his dad cycled by in
Speaker 2: his bicycle. He broke off from the army at four
Speaker 2: o'clock after he just came back. Just happened to see
Speaker 2: that moment. And at the moment he came by, Jazz
Speaker 2: was running away from two boys and crying, and his
Speaker 2: father hit Jazz for running away and crying and then
Speaker 2: tied him too his bike and made him run home
Speaker 2: behind his bike for a punishment for not fighting the
Speaker 2: two boys. Now you can you can imagine that creates
Speaker 2: quite a that creates quite a tough child. And so
Speaker 2: Jazz spent his life being extremely aggressive. But he achieved
Speaker 2: a lot of things by being aggressive. And for instance,
Speaker 2: you're going to jump forwards, I'm going to jump forwards,
Speaker 2: but you can go through it in a minute. After
Speaker 2: WAM played in China and we managed to pull off
Speaker 2: what we could. Whole purpose of WAM playing in China
Speaker 2: was to jump the forwards and get them into stadium
Speaker 2: tours without waiting any longer. And everyone in America said
Speaker 2: they're not ready for stadium tours. And we were signed
Speaker 2: with Frank Barcelona, and Frank Barcelona said no, you're not
Speaker 2: ready for tours, and Jazz did, yes, we are, this
Speaker 2: is what I want you to book. And Frank said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to and Jazz, well, we're walking away
Speaker 2: from you. I don't care if we've got a sign contract.
Speaker 2: If you won't do what we want, why not with you?
Speaker 2: And Frank's did you can't to Jazz that I can,
Speaker 2: and he did so Jazz walked away, went to another
Speaker 2: promoter and when he tried to book stadium tours, he
Speaker 2: find that Frank had booked every single stadium for three
Speaker 2: months ahead. Every stadium American He just put deposits down
Speaker 2: and made there were no stadiums anywhere in America.
Speaker 3: And.
Speaker 2: Jazz got round there. He went to people who had alternatives.
Speaker 2: We paid la race course. Phil Graham didn't like Frank Barcelona,
Speaker 2: so he put us enter the venues. He had a
Speaker 2: bit by bit, Jazz got round that I couldn't have
Speaker 2: done that, you know, I'm a compromise, right. I just
Speaker 2: sat down with Frank and said, well, maybe we'll wait
Speaker 2: another year. And that probably would have lost with the
Speaker 2: group because George and Andrew were very definite. After we
Speaker 2: played China, we're doing stadium tours a great value to Jazz.
Speaker 2: But my god, he could be an angry man, but
Speaker 2: a good angry man. There was a great story when
Speaker 2: he went to EMI one day, this is just after
Speaker 2: we finished Manager, when he went to EMI to see
Speaker 2: the new head of a A and R of one
Speaker 2: of the divisions. And when he went in, the guy
Speaker 2: and and I were sitting behind the desk, and he said, grumbling.
Speaker 2: He said to Jazz, he said, this business is getting
Speaker 2: taken over by quairs. And jazz leapt up in a fury,
Speaker 2: grabbed the guy by his lapels, smashed him against the
Speaker 2: wall and shouted, well, my wife's and my partner's are queer.
Speaker 2: And he pushed him in a cupboard, slammed the door shut,
Speaker 2: locked it, and threw the key out of the window
Speaker 2: as the third floor window. I like that story. The
Speaker 2: guy who's found forteen hours later by the cleaning pagers
Speaker 2: very well soiled. So that's a good side of jazz
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you get and how did you lose? Wham?
Speaker 2: Well, we got Wam by going after them. We got
Speaker 2: Wham by we After this lunch, we sat down and talked.
Speaker 2: We made a list of groups we'd like to manage.
Speaker 2: We did not want to go look for new groups.
Speaker 2: There was a waste of two years of your life
Speaker 2: for stunning new groups, trying to break them, failing to
Speaker 2: get another one. We wanted a group who already had
Speaker 2: a hit or two and whom we could then take
Speaker 2: to real megastartum. And we made quite a good list.
Speaker 2: There was a Culture Club, and there was the Rhythmics.
Speaker 2: Three or four groups who were about at that level,
Speaker 2: and one was Wham. And when we looked at the list,
Speaker 2: we both knew Whams the one we both seen them
Speaker 2: on Top of the Pops. We've seen their first Top
Speaker 2: of the Pops. It was extraordinary performance, really brilliant performance
Speaker 2: and quite out of the ordinary. This wonderful living, this
Speaker 2: sort of you know, the two young lads around town
Speaker 2: that Starsky in half Gymmetry the Romance Review call it,
Speaker 2: and such slickness. And they knew how to work to
Speaker 2: camera and a wage this is the first time they've
Speaker 2: ever been on television. They look like they've been doing
Speaker 2: it every week for the lads, and so he said,
Speaker 2: let's chase after them. And we knew the publishers, Morrison Lee.
Speaker 2: He went to see them, and they thought we'd be
Speaker 2: a good idea. They knew Jazz, they knew his aggressiveness,
Speaker 2: his absolutely desire not to fail, and he took on.
Speaker 2: They knew me from my reputation, particularly with Japan. Sudden
Speaker 2: the introducers to the group, and it was very interesting
Speaker 2: because it's true when you saw WAM on television on
Speaker 2: top of the Pops, they looked like a couple of twins.
Speaker 2: I don't mean they looked physically alike, but they were
Speaker 2: these two, you know, they were the lads around town.
Speaker 2: They were out the club, the two club, two young clubbers,
Speaker 2: best friends. And when they came in the apartment, came
Speaker 2: into my part, they were the absolutely opposite of each other.
Speaker 2: I mean they were not like that. Andrew was like that.
Speaker 2: That image was Andrew. Andrew was the image for both
Speaker 2: of them. George is absolutely not he He came in,
Speaker 2: and Andrew came in and he said down. He put
Speaker 2: his feet up on my coffee table and picked up
Speaker 2: a book on the I've written my first first book,
Speaker 2: I wrote. He was reading a bit, said, oh, George
Speaker 2: is Simon. Look at this. Simon was drunk and has
Speaker 2: sex all through the sixties. That's the guy we want,
Speaker 2: you know, we want something like that. George is sitting
Speaker 2: in a very uptight I want to know who you've managed,
Speaker 2: what you've done, what you would do with us. He said,
Speaker 2: you've got to We've got to have the best accountants.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, of course you get the best,
Speaker 2: and we want two lots of accountants. And I said,
Speaker 2: what's the other lot for? What to keep an eye
Speaker 2: on the first lot. I mean, he was a very
Speaker 2: very cautious, untrusted, untrusting person, and I could see it
Speaker 2: once he really had come from exactly the background talking
Speaker 2: about an artist who has not trusted adults. He's had
Speaker 2: a he has had in his childhood, definitely not the
Speaker 2: costages surrounding which Andrew had had. It was a totally relaxed,
Speaker 2: easy going, charming gun. But that was excellent. What a
Speaker 2: great combination. I mean, Andrew who could provide this image
Speaker 2: and this charm and George was so different A bit
Speaker 2: like Chas Night. You know, it was very, very different
Speaker 2: from each So we took them on and George said,
Speaker 2: we went to dinner and George said the first night,
Speaker 2: at the first dinner, were you're going to be the
Speaker 2: biggest group in the world, and you've got one year.
Speaker 2: I just laughed. I said, the biggest group in the
Speaker 2: world has to be the biggest group in America, because
Speaker 2: it's sixty percent of the world market. And no British
Speaker 2: group's ever broken in America under three or four years.
Speaker 2: Even the Beatles took three or four years. That's completely impossible.
Speaker 2: MTV was just starting, but there was no national press,
Speaker 2: there was no leak without a MPY. Prior to that,
Speaker 2: there was no national word from merging group. It had
Speaker 2: to be done piece, region by region. I'd done it
Speaker 2: before the yardburs. It took time, and George so we'll
Speaker 2: take it or leave it one year or don't manage us.
Speaker 2: So of course we say, yeah, okay, one year. And
Speaker 2: then as the dinner went on, Jazz or somebody had
Speaker 2: the idea, why not make you the first group ever
Speaker 2: to play in communist China, the first Western pop group
Speaker 2: ever to play in communist China, and George like that.
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, do that okay, great, fantastic settled and
Speaker 2: that was it. And then two weeks later I was
Speaker 2: in Beijing, sitting in a seedy hotel having just getting it.
Speaker 2: Was amazing because you couldn't get visa for China in
Speaker 2: the sense unless you were part of an organized group
Speaker 2: invited by the government. But I someoney told me a
Speaker 2: place in Hong Kong I could go and buy a
Speaker 2: visa for a few hundred dollars and get across the border.
Speaker 2: And if you take the train to guang Jo and
Speaker 2: you go to the left hand gate immigration gate way
Speaker 2: for the guy called Juan Joe and show him your
Speaker 2: passport and he'll slip something in and watchur in the country.
Speaker 2: So I got in the country. I got himself to Beijing,
Speaker 2: was sitting in this hotel and thinking, I want Wham
Speaker 2: to come and play in China. Who can give permission?
Speaker 2: And why would they? And the only person I can
Speaker 2: think of food give permission was just happened to be
Speaker 2: the head of Shana Danshalping, chairman of the Commorts Party,
Speaker 2: probably the second or third most important person in the world.
Speaker 2: An absurd thing to try to be doing and why
Speaker 2: would he let them in? But you know, I thought
Speaker 2: a lot. I managed to get in touch with the minister.
Speaker 2: I told him what I was doing. He told me
Speaker 2: that China was opening up and they wanted to get
Speaker 2: lots of foreign investment, and I said, you know, the
Speaker 2: best possible way, the best possible way to get foreign
Speaker 2: investment is to invite a teenage pop group to come
Speaker 2: and play in China. Because everyone in the world knows
Speaker 2: that teenagers are subversive like the older generation, they want
Speaker 2: to change things, they want to do things to Harry,
Speaker 2: they always work against the established order for China, to
Speaker 2: invite at western group to come to China would really
Speaker 2: show such confidence in yourself, such an ability to open
Speaker 2: up and accept new ideas. Your foreign investment were absolutely pouring.
Speaker 2: And he wasn't convinced. And I went back every month
Speaker 2: for fifteen months, meeting more and more ministers and trying
Speaker 2: to persuade them, and eventually persuaded them, and eventually I
Speaker 2: was taken to an office where the minister got on
Speaker 2: a red phone which went directly to Danshao being they
Speaker 2: spoke and he told me, yes, you're invited to come
Speaker 2: and play this gig, which was an astonishing thing to
Speaker 2: pull off. I'm looking back now, I'm more amazed than
Speaker 2: I was at the time. And yes, Wang got to
Speaker 2: play those stadium tours as a result, and China got
Speaker 2: its investment because I went back to Beijing a year
Speaker 2: later and the drab, dull, old fashioned Beijing which was
Speaker 2: there in nineteen eighty five when I first went, with
Speaker 2: no modern buildings at all, and just a single level,
Speaker 2: five story buildings on both sides of these wide avenues,
Speaker 2: so the whole thing was like huge prison yards. I
Speaker 2: went back a year later and everywhere it was like
Speaker 2: a building, absolutely everywhere. And I went to see the
Speaker 2: minister who invited me, and he said it started the meeting.
Speaker 2: Within a month of that of your gig, the foreign
Speaker 2: investments poured in and it's doubled and continued to double
Speaker 2: every year. So that was quite fun to have been
Speaker 2: part of creating modern Beaiging.
Speaker 1: So how did you lose Willem Well?
Speaker 2: George said to me one day, I'm coming back from
Speaker 2: a CBS conference in Bournemouth. In the limousine, he said,
Speaker 2: when I go, So we'd already agreed he was going
Speaker 2: to go on for six or months that was always
Speaker 2: that was always pre arranged. He bought the date forward,
Speaker 2: he'd always wrenered it. George said to me, when I
Speaker 2: go solo, I don't want Jazz to be part of
Speaker 2: the management. I just want you. And I said, you
Speaker 2: can't tell me that. I can't do that. I can't
Speaker 2: go to Jazz and say you're not going to manage
Speaker 2: what George with me. He's been half of this management.
Speaker 2: Everything has happened has been half because of him. And
Speaker 2: I can't do it anymore than if I told you
Speaker 2: right now you had to get rid of Andrew. You're
Speaker 2: planning to leave Andrew. But if I told you you
Speaker 2: had to, you wouldn't do it. And George, it's quite
Speaker 2: He's okay. He said, no, I understand you can't, but
Speaker 2: if you don't, you can't manage it. I said, well
Speaker 2: that's it. I won't manage it because I'm not prepared
Speaker 2: to go and tell Jazz. I'm going to do it
Speaker 2: by myself. And that was it. Really we became. We
Speaker 2: were quite amicable about it. And then I went and
Speaker 2: told Jazz that we would not be managing. Wow, because
Speaker 2: I didn't say I didn't say. George said it was
Speaker 2: him I said, he doesn't want us to manage it,
Speaker 2: and so Jazz said, well, let's sell the company while
Speaker 2: we're still managiner. And so we made a deal with
Speaker 2: Harvey Goldsmith, who was the biggest promoter in the UK
Speaker 2: and who promoted all of Wham's concerts in the UK,
Speaker 2: to sell our company to Harvey Goldsmith. It was quite
Speaker 2: a good deal and we get a capital son out
Speaker 2: of it. But the problem was Harvey Goldsmith had just
Speaker 2: sold his company to a guy called soul Kertzter who
Speaker 2: owned Sun City in South Africa. I didn't really bother
Speaker 2: as much because we were selling our company to Harvey
Speaker 2: and he hadn't sold his company to sun City. He
Speaker 2: sold his company to the guy who also owned sun City.
Speaker 2: But when the deal went through, the Hollywood Reporter carried
Speaker 2: a headline which said WHAM Management sell to sun City,
Speaker 2: and George called me up. So I can't live with it.
Speaker 2: I can't live with that headline. I'm going to have
Speaker 2: to fire and again was quite amiable. It's strange people
Speaker 2: like to think that these things are always huge routes.
Speaker 2: But I went and had lunch with him and I said, well,
Speaker 2: it's too late now, and I can't get rid of
Speaker 2: the headline. It's there, And he said, I just wish
Speaker 2: you'd done it more quietly, but I'm going to have
Speaker 2: to fire. So he did. But we were actually at
Speaker 2: that time, I, Jazz and I were also managing a
Speaker 2: guy called David Austin, who was one of George's best friends.
Speaker 2: And George said, don't I still manage I still managed
Speaker 2: to work with you, and well, I'll produce David Austin.
Speaker 2: So a week after he ostensibly farre us, you know,
Speaker 2: I went up to em I to talk about David
Speaker 2: Austin debit. David aside with George and everyone hear Min
Speaker 2: was amazed, how can we fired you? Last week? He
Speaker 2: was sitting here talking. But you know, he fired me
Speaker 2: from being a manager. He didn't farm for being a friend.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just completely different things. There were good reasons,
Speaker 2: and he was right. I mean, he couldn't have headline
Speaker 2: is going to just worry or destroy his career. And
Speaker 2: so that was it. And then Harvey, I guess unsold
Speaker 2: his company and we unsold it. That was it. They
Speaker 2: didn't worry me. I couldn't have broken George in America
Speaker 2: like he was broken I knew George was breaking up
Speaker 2: WHAM really because he was gay and he couldn't face
Speaker 2: the pressure of permanently having to dodge around and tell
Speaker 2: semi lies about his sexuality. And once he left, once
Speaker 2: he broke them up, the whole idea for me was
Speaker 2: to become himself. And when he broke them up and
Speaker 2: then created a new image for himself which was even
Speaker 2: more non gay and even more heterosexual than the image
Speaker 2: had had, I told him, and we were still talking,
Speaker 2: that's going to kill you. You hate it. You can't
Speaker 2: live with that image. And if I'd been managing him,
Speaker 2: I just I wouldn't have gone managing it anyway, or
Speaker 2: I just decided not to do it, and I could
Speaker 2: see what was going to happen. I mean, a year
Speaker 2: of huge success and I you know, the two managers
Speaker 2: of the American Managers GOT did a brilliant job for
Speaker 2: him and kept him going for that year Getting. He
Speaker 2: was getting more and more unhappy throughout the whole period,
Speaker 2: and by the end of the year. I mean, I
Speaker 2: did tell the story in the film I made about it,
Speaker 2: but at the end of the year he was he
Speaker 2: was pretty I'm unable to go on with it. He
Speaker 2: knew he'd done emotionally the wrong thing. But the other hand,
Speaker 2: he had sixty million dollars in the back and that
Speaker 2: was him secure for the rest of his life, which
Speaker 2: is something he did want. So I had no regrets
Speaker 2: because I don't look at him think I could have
Speaker 2: done that. There's no way I could have gone through
Speaker 2: that year with them in America.
Speaker 1: Did you foresee his death at a young age?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's a very general question that's easy
Speaker 2: to answer, yes, because he had that about him. He
Speaker 2: had about him somebody who would. I think he forcedaw
Speaker 2: And when people foresaw things, it's sort of like wanting it,
Speaker 2: isn't it. I mean, you know, a large part of
Speaker 2: an artist, an artist like George, he's not the only one.
Speaker 2: He's an artist in creating songs, as an artist in
Speaker 2: creating his image and his videos and the general look,
Speaker 2: but he's also his artist in creating the overall arc
Speaker 2: of his story life. And he saw the arc of
Speaker 2: a life story and he was far too aware not
Speaker 2: to be not to understand what a good a good
Speaker 2: story arc for an artist is. And he's had two
Speaker 2: bipolar relatives who'd committed suicide, and he was pretty obsessed
Speaker 2: with the idea that he might get driven to suicide.
Speaker 2: So whether he was suicidal or not, he did have
Speaker 2: in mind that he might die not a natural death
Speaker 2: at an old age. He always had that in mind,
Speaker 2: and he was not He was quite forthcoming about talking
Speaker 2: about it. He was a very perceptive person about himself,
Speaker 2: and I think he foresaw himself as not getting very old.
Speaker 2: Oh Gary old, being seventy or eighty. You know when
Speaker 2: when his voice as he did that, when he did
Speaker 2: that sympoonicatur, he looked at him and thought, you know,
Speaker 2: he could be a Charles dazibor, he could be a
Speaker 2: Tony Bennett. He could go out and sing other people's
Speaker 2: songs almost better than his own songs. And going to
Speaker 2: a town with the Rufus waynerright song, he sang it
Speaker 2: so well that everybody thought it was his song. He
Speaker 2: just he owned these songs when he sang. He sang
Speaker 2: other people's songs quite magnificently, and he could have been
Speaker 2: a very long term artist performing on their own. It
Speaker 2: didn't appeal to him at all. He wasn't interested. He
Speaker 2: wanted to create new music. We go back to one
Speaker 2: of the first questions you asked me, why can't older
Speaker 2: establish hugely skillful craftsmen still write hit songs. And the
Speaker 2: fact is the public don't want hit songs from those
Speaker 2: older people. They want them from the person they knew
Speaker 2: as a young person. They're happy for the older person
Speaker 2: to recreate the younger thing again, got was sing it.
Speaker 2: They don't want to hear new songs from them. The
Speaker 2: songwriting didn't just diminish because his ability to write songs
Speaker 2: to themishes. The public stopped wanting them. They want the
Speaker 2: young songs. That's my thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you then segue into making movies?
Speaker 2: I just did what I should have done from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Movies was what I was brought up with. I looked
Speaker 2: at movies. I copped out of movies when I was
Speaker 2: younger because they took a long time and I was
Speaker 2: impatient and yan. And you know, when you make a movie,
Speaker 2: if you're talking about feature films, not talkingmentaries from the
Speaker 2: the concept, the first concept idea you have for a
Speaker 2: movie to when the movie is finished just four to
Speaker 2: five years. You have to get concept. You have to
Speaker 2: get the script, you have to raise the money, you
Speaker 2: have to make it promoted. You could make an album
Speaker 2: in the ninety sixties in a day. You could make
Speaker 2: an album today. Pick the best track out, have it
Speaker 2: on radio two nights later. The speed was so youthful,
Speaker 2: so energetic, as so much what I loved and wanted
Speaker 2: to do. And once I was in the music industry,
Speaker 2: I was trapped. It was the music industry is a
Speaker 2: hugely enjoyable, fun, undisciplined world, and the film industry has
Speaker 2: to be disciplined. You can't be undisciplined. Too many people
Speaker 2: contribute to a film. I needed to contribute at every level,
Speaker 2: both the dull ones and the creative ones. They're all needed.
Speaker 2: And so I opted out and had my fun. But
Speaker 2: by the time, by the time I got to the nineties,
Speaker 2: I really wanted to make films. I wanted to do
Speaker 2: what I'd sort of always wanted to do but hadn't done.
Speaker 2: And it just fitted. It just fitted my personality and
Speaker 2: how I wanted to live. And as much what I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm work more fun than writing books because I went
Speaker 2: to writing books first. I'd always thought I should be
Speaker 2: a writer. I wrote books, and I wrote three or
Speaker 2: four very well received, very good books. But writing books
Speaker 2: is so tedious. I mean you sit for a year
Speaker 2: and than a room by yourself and have all the
Speaker 2: self doubts which you get with anything when you create,
Speaker 2: but you have them all bottled apping yourself for a
Speaker 2: year and not fun at all. Making movies is very relaxed.
Speaker 2: It's communal, you're out with people, you're talking and discussing things.
Speaker 2: You have to compromise a bit more than you do
Speaker 2: with writing, but it's a pleasant life. And there's no
Speaker 2: age barrier either. You know my age now in the
Speaker 2: film business, in record business, it's incredibly difficult persuade people
Speaker 2: that some of my age should have should be effective
Speaker 2: in the record business. If you write down the top
Speaker 2: grossing the top twenty grossing film directors in the world,
Speaker 2: half of them are over seventy and five of those
Speaker 2: are over eighty. So there's no age barrier to making films.
Speaker 2: So it felt like and comfortable to get into for
Speaker 2: the last lap.
Speaker 1: Okay, it is public knowledge you are eighty five. Ironically
Speaker 1: you share my birthday a pl twenty second along with
Speaker 1: Peter Frampton. Yeah, is someone who did not know that.
Speaker 1: Listening to you, you are as sharp as anybody consciously there.
Speaker 1: Do you still see runway do you still things you
Speaker 1: want to achieve? Do you act like, Wow, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: live for another fifteen years, or do you say, hey, man,
Speaker 1: every day's a blessing. You know, how do you approach it?
Speaker 2: I've never managed to do that. I read people who
Speaker 2: get ill, when they're recovered, they say, ah, every day's
Speaker 2: a blessing. I can't think about that when every day
Speaker 2: is nice and a pain in the ass all the
Speaker 2: things that are us. Nothing has changed. Really, there are
Speaker 2: good days and bad daysn't much more likely every day
Speaker 2: has the good and the bad. I've read things in
Speaker 2: your column time to time when you were really very ill,
Speaker 2: and I thought, God, Bob, Bob, he's not gonna last
Speaker 2: a bit longer, much longer. And then a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks ago you were writing about how you like to
Speaker 2: be perfect at all times, and you you're currently you
Speaker 2: are they see you weren't so well after all. I've
Speaker 2: got Listen, you get to eighty five when people say
Speaker 2: how are you? The easiest thing to hand them a list?
Speaker 2: You know there's going to be five or six things
Speaker 2: wrong with me. If I was fifty and I had
Speaker 2: those things wrong with me, I'd be horrified. With any
Speaker 2: one of them. But you learn to live with them,
Speaker 2: and you learn to cope with them, and they're just
Speaker 2: just annoyances. But you have to be aware. I've got
Speaker 2: a little chart I found in them online a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago. At eighty five, your chances of living beyond
Speaker 2: one year only fifteen percent. So there's an eighty five
Speaker 2: percent chance eighty five percents I won't be live next year.
Speaker 2: Funnily enough, each year you live longer, that chance gets greater,
Speaker 2: because the average age of death is eighty three y four.
Speaker 2: If you go past that, you're now into the people
Speaker 2: who live longer.
Speaker 4: Even but as they say, the longer you live, the
Speaker 4: longer you live, you might do. Yeah, it's like shows
Speaker 4: in Las Vegas. There's an interesting go back to Las
Speaker 4: Vegas show. Everywhere in the world, when a shows run
Speaker 4: a long time, it's going to come off soon. And
Speaker 4: in Vegas, the longer it runs, the more it becomes
Speaker 4: a part of Vegas. And long term Vegas shows never
Speaker 4: come off. And our shows hit that point, they've now
Speaker 4: given us a Las Vegas day. We have a rating
Speaker 4: a rock balled day in Las Vegas.
Speaker 2: Every day. That means they expect you to be there forever,
Speaker 2: So I'd like a Simon Api bail day here forever.
Speaker 2: I plan almost as if I'm going to be around,
Speaker 2: But you know, I don't bother. I'm working on movies,
Speaker 2: and I don't bother much with scripted movies, with that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff, because it's about a five year prep time.
Speaker 2: If I had the most brilliant idea and everybody agreed
Speaker 2: that it's brilliant, and everybody says, we want to put
Speaker 2: money and this is this is an amazing film, this
Speaker 2: is going to happen, it'll still be five years before
Speaker 2: it's on the screen. That seems to be longer than
Speaker 2: it's worth getting involved at eighty five. So I go
Speaker 2: for documentaries where you can have an idea now and
Speaker 2: it could be you could be making it in a
Speaker 2: few weeks. And I'm working on two films currently, you know,
Speaker 2: just pretty good be interested to have two films at once,
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty happy with it. One of those two films,
Speaker 2: I'm making one about the Marquee Club. And my actually,
Speaker 2: my feeling about the Marque Club was what would be
Speaker 2: interesting is not to make a film just about a club.
Speaker 2: I've seen a couple of American films about clubs, one
Speaker 2: about the Go Go and Whiskey and Gogan, one about
Speaker 2: the La Club. They get a bit boring, just endless.
Speaker 2: People say, hey, way man, you know everyone was down there,
Speaker 2: Brad Pitt was smashed. I looked at the Marque Club
Speaker 2: and I thought, the story is how trad jazz turned
Speaker 2: into skiffle turned into rock. The story I told you
Speaker 2: earlier that all happened at the Marque Club. The Marque
Speaker 2: Club was a trad jazz club which became a skiffle club,
Speaker 2: which became the Rhythm of Blews Company. It became the
Speaker 2: birthplace of rock, and then every major rock group played there.
Speaker 2: So we're really looking at the story of the music
Speaker 2: and the evolution. A two or three part series on that,
Speaker 2: but all at the Marquee Club, because that is where
Speaker 2: it happened. So that film's underway and we've got a
Speaker 2: great number of people. I went into viewed Phil Collins
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago. Great keep Phil Collins at
Speaker 2: fifteen left school every day at three o'clock and took
Speaker 2: the train into town and arranged the chairs and the
Speaker 2: Marquee clubs so they'd let him in free. And he
Speaker 2: could sit in the front row. He did that for
Speaker 2: two years, so every single group is great. That's the
Speaker 2: story we wanted more than the story of his stardom later.
Speaker 2: Enormous number of people who went through this whole process.
Speaker 2: It's a very exciting fun film to make. Fat They
Speaker 2: come to La shortly and we're talking to Big Fleetwood
Speaker 2: and Brown Auger and the other film I'm doing is
Speaker 2: the Wham to China film and the story of taking
Speaker 2: Wam to China. It's an amazing story because I glossed
Speaker 2: over it with you when I was telling it tonight,
Speaker 2: because it goes on a long time. But how I've
Speaker 2: persuaded all those ministers to take Wan, and how the
Speaker 2: thing evolved, and there was an extraordinary story. You know,
Speaker 2: artists are very up and down. George not the least.
Speaker 2: It took fifteen months ago into China, every single month,
Speaker 2: and I fed ministers. That's why I got it. I'd
Speaker 2: bought lunch in a Beijing which had no good foods.
Speaker 2: There was one great restaurant and the only hotel foreigners
Speaker 2: were allowed to stay up and they had a great
Speaker 2: restaurant because it was paid for and dollars so they
Speaker 2: could get an important good food. The food in Beijing
Speaker 2: wasn't good. And every week I got more and more
Speaker 2: ministers to come who were really coming just because they
Speaker 2: loved the meal and didn't even want the thing to
Speaker 2: come off because when it did, it at the end
Speaker 2: of their dinners or under their lunches. And I'd report
Speaker 2: back every month to George and Andrew and say what's
Speaker 2: going on. I could see we were getting there, and
Speaker 2: we finally pulled it off. And when I flew back
Speaker 2: finally and I had the invitation, I got to London,
Speaker 2: I told my secretary call a press conference tomorrow. We're
Speaker 2: going to announce it. Caught up George Andrews had come
Speaker 2: to dinner and tell um, we've done it. We're going
Speaker 2: to play in China. And George said, I change your mind.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do it, and he was serious
Speaker 2: and absolutely don't want to do it. Just completely change.
Speaker 2: It's not what I want to do. And Andrew and
Speaker 2: I just sat and argument for an hour over dinner,
Speaker 2: and finally George said, well, I'll do it, but no
Speaker 2: journalists saw reporters, which was the whole purpose of doing it. Well,
Speaker 2: of course, three weeks later he bounced out in the
Speaker 2: stage and we're three hundred film crews, journalists, reporters, photographers,
Speaker 2: and he didn't mind at all. You just like all artists,
Speaker 2: they get nerves that one minute they're megalomaniacs. They're so
Speaker 2: full of confidence. You wanted calm them and said, come on,
Speaker 2: you know things can go wrong, be careful, and other
Speaker 2: minutes they just collapse in a bundle of nerves. He
Speaker 2: had those moments, like any good artist should.
Speaker 1: Just going back to the movies, how much money do
Speaker 1: these movies cost and where do the money come from?
Speaker 2: Well, I made for I made one about Frank Sinatra
Speaker 2: on what would have been his hundredth birthy. That was
Speaker 2: a ninety minute film for Netflix, about three hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty four hundred thousand. Then I made one called twenty
Speaker 2: seven Gone Too Soon about the twenty seventh Club. Really
Speaker 2: interesting because when I started it, I thought it was
Speaker 2: just a load of rubbish, and when I studied it,
Speaker 2: I found no load of rubbish at all. Twenty seven
Speaker 2: is the age your frontal lobe becomes mature and frontal
Speaker 2: low gives you cause and effect. And that's the moment
Speaker 2: when people doubt themselves because they suddenly realize that giving
Speaker 2: up their opportunity to be a doctor or a scientist
Speaker 2: by leaving university to become a rock star, and is
Speaker 2: it what I want? So this is a very good
Speaker 2: reason for these high level of death sort of suicides
Speaker 2: to happen. Then I made a film called fifty Years Legal,
Speaker 2: which is to mark the fiftieth Ani versus Brittain, a
Speaker 2: decriminized sol and sexiarity that costs about that costs about
Speaker 2: half a million, and we've got every single gay personality
Speaker 2: in Britain and David Hotney and Stephen Fryan just everybody
Speaker 2: to talking that. And then this one about George George
Speaker 2: Michael portrait of an artist, same sort of same sort
Speaker 2: of money you're talking about it. Half the problem with
Speaker 2: all these films is when you're interviewing. When you're doing
Speaker 2: interviews and talking heads to us stars, they're not easy
Speaker 2: to get. You have to go where they are, so
Speaker 2: you end up on a lot of travel and a
Speaker 2: lot of wasted time, you know, four days flying somewhere
Speaker 2: to talk to one person's that's an extravagance. And the
Speaker 2: one I'm doing now, the Marquee, we it's privately raised money,
Speaker 2: but we've got the money for a ninety minute film,
Speaker 2: but we're getting so much material we think it needs
Speaker 2: to be probably a three three times one hour, even
Speaker 2: a four times one hour, because when we get to
Speaker 2: rock music actually happening, it fragments into so many different
Speaker 2: areas to pro crock, punk, rock, golf rock, and it'd
Speaker 2: be nice to follow the follow It could could snowball
Speaker 2: into a bigger film, but again, a sort of a
Speaker 2: half million pound budget for six hundred thousand dollars bout
Speaker 2: it for a nineteen minute film and if it goes
Speaker 2: into a three times one hour, probably going up to
Speaker 2: two million.
Speaker 1: Okay, Simon, I think we're going to stop here. We
Speaker 1: hit the outlines of your career. We hit a few
Speaker 1: deep stories, the stuff about Skiffel. That's the best explanation
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. Like I was riveted. I know you
Speaker 1: have more insight like that. We'll have to continue another time,
Speaker 1: but thanks so much for taking this time with my audience.
Speaker 2: Thank you. You're a great person to talk to. You
Speaker 2: just sit and look and smile, but you know how
Speaker 2: to get it out of people. Thank you, And just
Speaker 2: to gravel a little bit. I love your writing. I
Speaker 2: love your writing because it's not corrected. It's the complete
Speaker 2: officer of my writing, which is very polished and corrected,
Speaker 2: and yours isn't. And I can't do that. I'd have
Speaker 2: to be able to do it, but I can't. It
Speaker 2: reminds me of Kerallac and the Beach Generation, and you
Speaker 2: write in a wonderful, flowing, impulsive way. You know.
Speaker 1: The funny thing I've learned, thank you very much, is
Speaker 1: I used to explain this stuff that I really people
Speaker 1: don't really want the explanation. They just want to read it,
Speaker 1: so I won't explain it. But in any event, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. We'll do this again. Until next time.
Speaker 1: This is Bob Love Set