"We'll know tomorrow. They're reducing all the EMI A&R teams..."
On Wednesday, a friend of mine from EMI and I sit outside in dappled Kensington sunlight eating cake on a bench in the park behind the church. It's an idyllic scene - and the cakes are unbelievable, mine a chocolate one oozing with Bailey's cream - but the conversation is shot through with dread. My friend will be OK, we think, but there will be more people out of work and those that are left will be multi-tasking and cutting corners.
Just before this, I had a cup of tea with another pal who works over the road at Warners. Truly, Kensington High Street has become record company mile: with Sony BMG moving into the old Derry & Toms building above Marks and Spencers, the full major line will be complete with EMI/Virgin at one end, leading to the Universal Building (or Death Star, as it's widely known), then Sony BMG, then Atlantic in the Electric Lighting Station just past the old Kensington Market (now decimated into a branch of PC World). But left on the High St and a short walk up Church St, is the other Warners building, housing most of the old WEA group.
I drink tea with my Warners pal in his office, plastered with the artwork trophies of a successful music industry fella. He tells me how he used to be based at the Electric Lighting Station, working for Atlantic but has been moved to the Church St office to work for all of the labels. He rarely gets out of the building until 8pm. We were going to go out tonight but he needs a night in - and frankly who can blame him? He very generously gives me a pile of Warners CDs, we say goodbye and arrange to meet next week instead. As I walk out I look around the open plan office and sense something different... what is it? It dawns on me as I'm standing in the lift going down: there was no music playing.
If there is one thing that every record company office used to have in common, whether it was Creation or Interscope or Fierce Panda, it was that everyone who worked there loved music and was excited about the roster - there was a sense of possession over the artists that were currently being developed. Even artists who were not particularly popular with the staff were supported because everyone felt part of the team. It's a cliche but like all cliches, it's true: it wasn't a job, it was a lifestyle. I worked at East West (now rebranded Atlantic) in the 90s and the excitement over a new Simply Red album wasn't that the staff were that keen on hearing the Ginger Prince's new material (although some obviously were) but rather that it was going to sell in bucketloads and it's exciting selling records, being popular. Plus, there would be a party and and everyone would benefit in some way at the end of the year; we all felt a part of it, whether this was mistaken or not. The faces on the members of staff I passed on my way out today seemed disengaged and kind of, well, disappointed. They were all attractive, young people and had probably punched the air when they landed a job at a legendary place like Warners - many of them had probably got in via the Warners Graduate Trainee Scheme. Yes, Graduate Trainee Scheme: working at a record company is now just another career option, somewhere between accountancy and retail management. When I first got my job at Warners my mum had the classic "but when are you going to get a proper job?" reaction, and that was just how I wanted it. Working at a record company was something you did for the love of it, not for the career, not for any fiscal gain - it was an extension of your hobby.
My friend Andy who's worked at record company's longer than me, was looking to take on a junior member of staff a few years ago and had amassed a number of CVs from enthusiastic fanzine writers, club promoters and DJs. He took these to his HR department, who by return gave him a pile of CVs from candidates who had applied through the Graduate Trainee Scheme. These applicants were all finishing their degrees, possibly Media Studies, and were looking for their first job on the media career ladder. "But, what about taking on someone who is already out there doing it, someone with life skills, someone who may not have a degree but has a degree of swagger and originality?"
"We'll consider it, but we'd really rather you employed a graduate, Andy."
I can't remember what the outcome was, but it doesn't matter. The proof of who won the argument was in the faces on the graduates sitting in front of computers today. They were probably all thinking: "Wish I'd gone into the film industry, this is rubbish."
Next day I found myself back in Kensington seeing a friend at EMI Music Publishing. Unbelievably, they have finally moved from their old Tin Pan Alley headquarters on Charing Cross Road and shacked up with Terra Firma in EMI headquarters in Wrights Lane - adding further evidence that there really is only one remaining address for the music business. Frankly, I was amazed they let me through the door after the Guardian article, but soon I found myself sitting next to a 8 ft high replica of a Gibson Les Paul in the reception area. Say what you like about Guy Hands and co, they know how to do reception - all the latest magazines, a water cooler, comfy sofas in bright surroundings. In the Warner Building the day before, I sat in the cramped, murky reception with it's apologetically small plasma screen on the wall and picked through dog-eared copies of Billboard and Variety. Eventually I thought I had found something - a copy of the NME. It turned out to be from February. It was like being at the dentist.
Simon and I had lunch in EMI's canteen. Actually, to call it a canteen does it a disservice. It is a splendid place to have lunch. The other EMI Building at the Hammersmith end of the road has a canteen, which is much more like what you imagine: functional, a bit lived-in. Actually, if you ever find yourself having a snack in it - and let's be frank, who knows how much longer you'll have the opportunity - make sure you have a good look at the balustrade which runs along its upper level - it was taken from the old EMI building in Manchester Square and is the very one that four young lads from Merseyside leaned over on the cover of their first album.
The canteen in the Wrights Lane building is ultra modern; an open quadrangle or piazza between the interior sides of the glass tower, it offers three choices of lunch all at very reasonable prices. I'd happily have lunch here every day, but sooner or later Guy Hands would catch on, I'm sure.
Simon's office was like my friend's at Warners only it was virtually wallpapered in 7" single sleeves from the 70s, 80s and 90s. By way of explanation, he told me how he'd been charged with procuring singles for a jukebox that the company were going to present to Mr Hands as some sort of welcome gift. Each 7" single had to be a song or artist that had been number one for EMI publishing or records - Wuthering Heights, Summer Holiday, Country House etc.
He had scoured Record and Tape Exchange and Beanos (he got paid to do this! I would have done it for free - possibly even paid some cash upfront.) and noticing that some of the singles didn't have the big holes in the middle that you need to make them jukebox-compatible, discovered that Beanos have a hole-stamping machine especially for this, which they oiled-up for him. I don't know why this warms my heart me but it does.
Anyway, the singles were loaded onto the jukebox and the staff lined up to present their new leader with his trophy. Hands walked in, expressed gratitude and proceeded to randomly select a 7". It plopped onto the turntable and Terra Firma and EMI staff alike were greeted with the dulcet tones of Mick Hucknell's voice singing his well-known choice from EMI/Windswept Pacific's catalogue, Money's Too Tight (To Mention). The Ginger Prince strikes again.
Back on the park bench eating the cake with my other EMI A&R pal, I mention the Scottish Band to him and try to tell him how well they are doing. He smiles indulgently but I sense the same slightly wistful look that I saw on the graduates' faces at Warners. He cannot care about any new music until he knows there is a point to it, until he knows if he can out there again and get something signed and make a great record with them. Until he knows he still has a job.
And maybe that's how the whole record business feels right now - do they have jobs? Is there a business? Let's hope so, for the Sb's sake.
Showing posts with label EMI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EMI. Show all posts
Saturday, 14 June 2008
Thursday, 28 February 2008
A Night in Hoxton
Of course, having been an A&R man for a million years in the 90s, I know a fair amount of folk who still do it. And I went out with two of them last Wednesday for a Vietnamese meal in Kingsland Rd - no, not the predictable Viet Hoa - the much better Song Que at bit further along - check out the soft shell crab, it's crunchy, it's chewy, like a fishy Double Decker, you just don't know where you are!
As we ate, we discussed the ludicrous Guy Hands anti-A&R rant, which I won't go into here, suffice to ask: Is he the new Gerald Ratner? Someone asked me to write something about it for the Guardian so you can read my thoughts here if you like. We also talked about Kill Your Friends, which one of us had read, one of us was reading (me - I finished it later that night) and one of us wasn't looking at on principle. I'll get to it later but in case you're wondering I'm happy to eat my words - it's very readable. Damn.
After eating we wandered down Kingsland road to Hoxton Square to get to the screamingly fashionable Hoxton Bar & Grill. I don't think they do actually grill anything there apart from people trying to get in who don't look like Noel Fielding, but there is a bar and we walked past it, making for the entrance at the back. Then we realised that we were walking past a queue, not just any old bored line of people looking at their watches, no, this queue made loud noises, everyone knew everyone else - it was a queue almost entirely built from A&R people. We found someone half way down it to talk to - I hate doing that, it's like driving in the bus lane and nipping in front of someone who's been queuing up properly for hours. Still, it did mean we got in quicker despite everyone behind us muttering obscenities.
The band we were there to see are called White Lies who are four 19 year-olds from Acton. They used to be a band called Fear Of Flying, who I remember quite liking when I was at V2. They used to sound a bit like The Teardrop Explodes, an exuberant bass player and chunky chords backing a .. well, actually that's where it fell down: the singer, whose voice had all the back-of-throat Julian Cope mannerisms but without any of the character. Also they looked a bit rubbish. Mind you, at the time they had just done their GSCEs and had armies of spots marching all over their faces.
What has happened to their stock in the meantime is little short of amazing. OK, so the acne is gone, they have new management, partially new musical direction and new trousers, but FOF attracted a handful of A&R people who sniffed and left. White Lies on the other hand is wall to wall A&R - and not just scouts, but serious, swaggering executives. In the first 10 minutes as we stood waiting for the band to come on, I saw the A&R men who look after Snow Patrol, Kate Nash, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Lilly Allen, Kylie Minogue, Babyshambles, Hot Chip and Corine Bailey Rae, plus managing directors and chairmen from Sony and Universal, not to mention cool labels like Nude, Fantastic Plastic and of course Moshi Moshi whose gig it was. Actually the headline act was Semifinalists, who I used to look after at V2 and on whose album I spent some considerable time working last year - did they tell me they were over in the UK doing shows? No, they did not. Artists, eh? Can't live with them...
Anyway, eventually, after what seemed like days, during which time the venue managed to cram in most of London and some of Japan, the lights go down and the band take the stage. They look great, it has to be said. Basically it's FOF without the puppy fat and all wearing black. There is also some serious hair going on - angular, foppish and sleek. They kick off with a song that goes on for days. In a parallel universe they are still playing it. It is stoppy-starty with long passages of single plucked guitar note over Peter Hookish slabs of bass. It's pretty good. The rhythm section are undeniably excellent, the drummer is not only a great player but looks - as my mate standing next to me, who signed Blur said - like Alex James. He's the star of the band. Which is the problem really. The singer hasn't really moved on from FOF that much. He still has the same Julian Cope meets Tony Hadley voice plus he never opens his eyes when he sings, never makes contact with the audience.
After the eighth minute of the first song, my mind begins to wander. I start playing Count The A&R Men which passes the time until song 2, which is much better. Well, much shorter anyway. They have obviously been listening to the Killers but also some of the things which the Killers were inspired by like Psychedelic Furs and The Cars - in fact as we leave later, I spot Ed Bueller the man who produced Suede and spent some time being in The Psychedelic Furs.
We're on our way to another bar where there is an aftershow for a fashion launch. It's like an episode of Nathan Barley tonight. Earlier in the evening, I'd bumped into my lovely friend Nicky, who has gone from sleepy-eyed, shy 20-something to running a very successful fashion PR company. She is hosting a Nudie Jeans launch in conjunction with Amnesty International in a bar along from where we had dinner. Through the windows, I can see inside the brightly-lit room, it's full of insanely young and fashionable types all jooshing around. I see my reflection in its flat cap and stripey scarf and long for a cup of tea and a book. "We're having an aftershow round the corner in The Macbeth," says Nicky, "You've got to come, the Cribs are playing - with Johnny Marr! The Horrors are DJing, there's a free bar ..."
"Great!" I hate the Cribs and The Horrors are unspeakably bad but Nicky is brilliant and well, free drinks, what could possibly go wrong?
Sure enough, that's where we end up. The Macbeth - or The Scottish Pub as I'm sure superstitious locals call it - is a refreshingly ungentrified East London boozer, Dirk or Squiggly or whatever his name is from The Horrors turns out to be a really good DJ and booze drinks are courtesy of those fashionable people at Nudie. It's an evening of lovely serendipity as well: I need a sleeve designer for my Scottish Band (no, I'm not superstitious about them, I just don't want to name them in the blog - I'm sure you'll work who they are eventually!) and I bump into Rob who I had been thinking of contacting but didn't have his number. Retts, who took pictures of my girl band is there taking pics of famous people for Nudie, I tell her the bloke who designed the stuffed animals in the Lightspeed Champion video is there but she doesn't seem impressed. My great friend Bakul is there too - she, Retts and Nicky all used to live together in her flat in Camden in the mid-90s, which became the unofficial aftershow destination. If she's not playing hostess, Bakul never misses a party. Most of London thinks her surname is Plus One.
I end up chatting with Laurence from Domino who I haven't seen in years (not since his label became massively successful) and he's still lovely. We realise we first met almost 20 years as I remind him of our Statten Island Ferry trip with Steve Lamacq during the New Music Seminar in 1991. "1990!" he corrects me. Bimey. It turns out he saw my Scottish band supporting Franz Ferdinand last year and thinks they're good. Funny, I realise for the first time what it feels like for band managers to hear that an A&R man 'quite likes' their act. Fortunately, having 'quite liked' hundreds of bands when I did A&R, I know that this is nothing to get overly excited about, it's a meaningless statement. But hey, Laurence likes the band! Hold the front page! Hang out the bunting! More champagne!
Eventually the surf wave music played by Faris Rotter (yes, that's his name, how could I forget?) gets too loud and the Cribs - with our without Marr - still haven't taken the small stage at the end of the bar so the three of us decide to leave. I give Matthew a big hug (an A&R bearhug as we call it) and then Michael offers me a lift to the tube station.
"What did you think of White Lies?" he asks, putting on the demo.
From my passenger seat, I tell him I thought the voice wasn't something I could imagine many people getting excited about. But you know what, who knows? I've just listened to the Myspace tracks and I'm warming to them. A&R's easy when you're not in the driving seat. That's why everyone thinks they can do it. Michael drops me off at Kings Cross and drives off home, mulling over whether he should put in an offer.
As we ate, we discussed the ludicrous Guy Hands anti-A&R rant, which I won't go into here, suffice to ask: Is he the new Gerald Ratner? Someone asked me to write something about it for the Guardian so you can read my thoughts here if you like. We also talked about Kill Your Friends, which one of us had read, one of us was reading (me - I finished it later that night) and one of us wasn't looking at on principle. I'll get to it later but in case you're wondering I'm happy to eat my words - it's very readable. Damn.
After eating we wandered down Kingsland road to Hoxton Square to get to the screamingly fashionable Hoxton Bar & Grill. I don't think they do actually grill anything there apart from people trying to get in who don't look like Noel Fielding, but there is a bar and we walked past it, making for the entrance at the back. Then we realised that we were walking past a queue, not just any old bored line of people looking at their watches, no, this queue made loud noises, everyone knew everyone else - it was a queue almost entirely built from A&R people. We found someone half way down it to talk to - I hate doing that, it's like driving in the bus lane and nipping in front of someone who's been queuing up properly for hours. Still, it did mean we got in quicker despite everyone behind us muttering obscenities.
The band we were there to see are called White Lies who are four 19 year-olds from Acton. They used to be a band called Fear Of Flying, who I remember quite liking when I was at V2. They used to sound a bit like The Teardrop Explodes, an exuberant bass player and chunky chords backing a .. well, actually that's where it fell down: the singer, whose voice had all the back-of-throat Julian Cope mannerisms but without any of the character. Also they looked a bit rubbish. Mind you, at the time they had just done their GSCEs and had armies of spots marching all over their faces.
What has happened to their stock in the meantime is little short of amazing. OK, so the acne is gone, they have new management, partially new musical direction and new trousers, but FOF attracted a handful of A&R people who sniffed and left. White Lies on the other hand is wall to wall A&R - and not just scouts, but serious, swaggering executives. In the first 10 minutes as we stood waiting for the band to come on, I saw the A&R men who look after Snow Patrol, Kate Nash, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Lilly Allen, Kylie Minogue, Babyshambles, Hot Chip and Corine Bailey Rae, plus managing directors and chairmen from Sony and Universal, not to mention cool labels like Nude, Fantastic Plastic and of course Moshi Moshi whose gig it was. Actually the headline act was Semifinalists, who I used to look after at V2 and on whose album I spent some considerable time working last year - did they tell me they were over in the UK doing shows? No, they did not. Artists, eh? Can't live with them...
Anyway, eventually, after what seemed like days, during which time the venue managed to cram in most of London and some of Japan, the lights go down and the band take the stage. They look great, it has to be said. Basically it's FOF without the puppy fat and all wearing black. There is also some serious hair going on - angular, foppish and sleek. They kick off with a song that goes on for days. In a parallel universe they are still playing it. It is stoppy-starty with long passages of single plucked guitar note over Peter Hookish slabs of bass. It's pretty good. The rhythm section are undeniably excellent, the drummer is not only a great player but looks - as my mate standing next to me, who signed Blur said - like Alex James. He's the star of the band. Which is the problem really. The singer hasn't really moved on from FOF that much. He still has the same Julian Cope meets Tony Hadley voice plus he never opens his eyes when he sings, never makes contact with the audience.
After the eighth minute of the first song, my mind begins to wander. I start playing Count The A&R Men which passes the time until song 2, which is much better. Well, much shorter anyway. They have obviously been listening to the Killers but also some of the things which the Killers were inspired by like Psychedelic Furs and The Cars - in fact as we leave later, I spot Ed Bueller the man who produced Suede and spent some time being in The Psychedelic Furs.
We're on our way to another bar where there is an aftershow for a fashion launch. It's like an episode of Nathan Barley tonight. Earlier in the evening, I'd bumped into my lovely friend Nicky, who has gone from sleepy-eyed, shy 20-something to running a very successful fashion PR company. She is hosting a Nudie Jeans launch in conjunction with Amnesty International in a bar along from where we had dinner. Through the windows, I can see inside the brightly-lit room, it's full of insanely young and fashionable types all jooshing around. I see my reflection in its flat cap and stripey scarf and long for a cup of tea and a book. "We're having an aftershow round the corner in The Macbeth," says Nicky, "You've got to come, the Cribs are playing - with Johnny Marr! The Horrors are DJing, there's a free bar ..."
"Great!" I hate the Cribs and The Horrors are unspeakably bad but Nicky is brilliant and well, free drinks, what could possibly go wrong?
Sure enough, that's where we end up. The Macbeth - or The Scottish Pub as I'm sure superstitious locals call it - is a refreshingly ungentrified East London boozer, Dirk or Squiggly or whatever his name is from The Horrors turns out to be a really good DJ and booze drinks are courtesy of those fashionable people at Nudie. It's an evening of lovely serendipity as well: I need a sleeve designer for my Scottish Band (no, I'm not superstitious about them, I just don't want to name them in the blog - I'm sure you'll work who they are eventually!) and I bump into Rob who I had been thinking of contacting but didn't have his number. Retts, who took pictures of my girl band is there taking pics of famous people for Nudie, I tell her the bloke who designed the stuffed animals in the Lightspeed Champion video is there but she doesn't seem impressed. My great friend Bakul is there too - she, Retts and Nicky all used to live together in her flat in Camden in the mid-90s, which became the unofficial aftershow destination. If she's not playing hostess, Bakul never misses a party. Most of London thinks her surname is Plus One.
I end up chatting with Laurence from Domino who I haven't seen in years (not since his label became massively successful) and he's still lovely. We realise we first met almost 20 years as I remind him of our Statten Island Ferry trip with Steve Lamacq during the New Music Seminar in 1991. "1990!" he corrects me. Bimey. It turns out he saw my Scottish band supporting Franz Ferdinand last year and thinks they're good. Funny, I realise for the first time what it feels like for band managers to hear that an A&R man 'quite likes' their act. Fortunately, having 'quite liked' hundreds of bands when I did A&R, I know that this is nothing to get overly excited about, it's a meaningless statement. But hey, Laurence likes the band! Hold the front page! Hang out the bunting! More champagne!
Eventually the surf wave music played by Faris Rotter (yes, that's his name, how could I forget?) gets too loud and the Cribs - with our without Marr - still haven't taken the small stage at the end of the bar so the three of us decide to leave. I give Matthew a big hug (an A&R bearhug as we call it) and then Michael offers me a lift to the tube station.
"What did you think of White Lies?" he asks, putting on the demo.
From my passenger seat, I tell him I thought the voice wasn't something I could imagine many people getting excited about. But you know what, who knows? I've just listened to the Myspace tracks and I'm warming to them. A&R's easy when you're not in the driving seat. That's why everyone thinks they can do it. Michael drops me off at Kings Cross and drives off home, mulling over whether he should put in an offer.
Monday, 28 January 2008
Happy Happy Merry Merry
What a start to the year.
So I come back into the office, a handful of days after my second daughter is born and discover that things are going to be even tougher this year than they were last year. My friend who runs a PR company has given me some space in his office to use while we kickstart the management company. One of the fringe benefits of this, I've discovered, is that he always knows news stories ahead of them breaking in the papers. So before the wires were sizzling, Andy says to me: "Happy New Year? Not at EMI. It's going to be carnage" And it was.
Before EMI employees had fully recovered from their Christmas splurge or even plonked down in front of their computers to greet 2008, one of their biggest artists Robbie Williams went to the press saying he's 'going on strike'. And contained in the body of the Times piece which appeared on 11 January was the bombshell that 'massive layoffs' were about to happen.
And sure enough, the following Monday, Guy Hands, director of Terra Firma, the private equity company that now owns EMI, told his assembled staff that there will be job cuts of up to 2000.
I looked that figure up online just now and the first news link I got - a BBC one - gave me the headline EMI announces 1,800 job cuts. Funny, I thought, I was under the impression that it wasn't a specific number - that Hands had only given a ballpark figure of 1500 to 2000 redundancies, roughly a third of the international EMI workforce. But then I noticed the date on the feature - 20 March 2002! The story was about the cuts about to be made by then-chairman Allain Levy to try and save the 'financially indebted company'. Plus ca change. Mind you, back then they could at least claim that it was Mariah Carey's fault. They'd just spent £38 million quid getting out of their deal with her which had gone - and here the expression takes on a deeply significant meaning - tits up. In 2002, the 1800 figure was a fifth of EMI's workforce. Now the 2000 cut represents a third. So in five years the workforce will have gone from 10,000 to 4000! Er, why I am attempting to remain in the music business? This thought wafts over my horizon as I take a call from the studio where one of our band rehearses and discover I owe them £253. How am I going to make that back, let alone £38 million?
A friend of mine who works for EMI phoned me up over the Christmas break. Like me, he enjoys writing and he'd spent his festive period writing a bullet-point guide on how to save the record industry. He was probably fearing for his job - unnecessary in my opinion as he's one of the few undeniably successful members of staff. Christ, if he feels insecure imagine what the rest of the building is like. So he'd had a go at this analysis of where the record business had all gone wrong and what should be done about it. It was a letter he planned to send to Music Week, a kind of music biz variation on a letter to The Times. It was doomed to failure. There is no step by step guide to solving the current conundrum which is that people can copy and duplicate their own music from friends or file sharing . Record industry currency - the finished, mastered, shiny new product is now only distinguishable from what we can burn at home in that it has artwork, and sometimes that means a 'four page booklet' which is a piece of folded paper with the artist's name printed on the front and a tracklisting on the back. And the kids don't even want artwork! We do, us middle -aged men, the ones who got a whiff of new wave, or new romanticism or even got off our mash at Shoom - we want artwork, we demand packaging. I want the box set of Pink Floyd albums in replica sleeves. DON'T ASK ME WHY! I just like artwork and packaging. But if I was 15, I wouldn't give an arctic monkeys, I'd download the whole lot overnight, and spend the money on trainers and cider.
In his letter, my pal- like me, an A&R person - put faith in 'making great records' and to a large extent I agree with this. He proposed that a certain album that is currently selling really well, a CD that was one of the few 'must-haves' in 2007 is a record without a single duff track on it and that's why it's doing so well. Make records like this, my friend argued, and people will buy them. The problem is that most albums are, to quote my mate Sarah Cawood, "Two killers, the rest of it fillers." And now, given that we can get the two killers for the princely sum of £1.58 on iTunes, why should we pay a tenner for the rest of it in a plastic box? Oh, and it was Amy Winehouse's album which my mate was going on about, which, say what you want about the smack-taking, is an unarguably palatable record. Better than Mika's anyway.
So do I expect to make equally thrilling records with the artists I manage? Here's what I think: Always expect the least expected thing. I don't know if I appropriated that bit of unhelpful wisdom or whether it's based on my own A&R experiences but I know that it is pretty much always the case in the music business. No one wanted Radiohead apart from Keith Wozencroft - at EMI incidentally. Why? Because the singer had a wonky eye, their songs were so-so, and crucially, they were all different heights! Imagine the Beatles or the Stones if there'd been a really tall one and a really short one! Riddiculous! Like Radiohead were ever going to happen! Last year, everyone, every single record company and publisher were queuing up to sign a certain female singer. She was feted; wined and dined, and everyone thought that signing her was, in current industry parlance, a 'no brainer' A friend of mine in music publishing asked her what she wanted out of a career in music and rather than saying, 'artistic satisfaction', or 'to get my songs heard', or even 'to get laid by skinny-trousered Camden pretties', she was honest and said, "A Coutts bank account'. Her record bombed and I suspect she's still with Nat West.
So the swan who signs for millions will frequently end up in the bargain bin, whilst the ugly duckling, who a solitary A&R person begrudgingly does a development deal with, frequently blossoms into a million seller. How's that for a January mixed metaphor?
So I make no expectations on my charges. We're just getting them to write the best songs they can And with that in mind, we've decided it's time to do some recordings ...
So I come back into the office, a handful of days after my second daughter is born and discover that things are going to be even tougher this year than they were last year. My friend who runs a PR company has given me some space in his office to use while we kickstart the management company. One of the fringe benefits of this, I've discovered, is that he always knows news stories ahead of them breaking in the papers. So before the wires were sizzling, Andy says to me: "Happy New Year? Not at EMI. It's going to be carnage" And it was.
Before EMI employees had fully recovered from their Christmas splurge or even plonked down in front of their computers to greet 2008, one of their biggest artists Robbie Williams went to the press saying he's 'going on strike'. And contained in the body of the Times piece which appeared on 11 January was the bombshell that 'massive layoffs' were about to happen.
And sure enough, the following Monday, Guy Hands, director of Terra Firma, the private equity company that now owns EMI, told his assembled staff that there will be job cuts of up to 2000.
I looked that figure up online just now and the first news link I got - a BBC one - gave me the headline EMI announces 1,800 job cuts. Funny, I thought, I was under the impression that it wasn't a specific number - that Hands had only given a ballpark figure of 1500 to 2000 redundancies, roughly a third of the international EMI workforce. But then I noticed the date on the feature - 20 March 2002! The story was about the cuts about to be made by then-chairman Allain Levy to try and save the 'financially indebted company'. Plus ca change. Mind you, back then they could at least claim that it was Mariah Carey's fault. They'd just spent £38 million quid getting out of their deal with her which had gone - and here the expression takes on a deeply significant meaning - tits up. In 2002, the 1800 figure was a fifth of EMI's workforce. Now the 2000 cut represents a third. So in five years the workforce will have gone from 10,000 to 4000! Er, why I am attempting to remain in the music business? This thought wafts over my horizon as I take a call from the studio where one of our band rehearses and discover I owe them £253. How am I going to make that back, let alone £38 million?
A friend of mine who works for EMI phoned me up over the Christmas break. Like me, he enjoys writing and he'd spent his festive period writing a bullet-point guide on how to save the record industry. He was probably fearing for his job - unnecessary in my opinion as he's one of the few undeniably successful members of staff. Christ, if he feels insecure imagine what the rest of the building is like. So he'd had a go at this analysis of where the record business had all gone wrong and what should be done about it. It was a letter he planned to send to Music Week, a kind of music biz variation on a letter to The Times. It was doomed to failure. There is no step by step guide to solving the current conundrum which is that people can copy and duplicate their own music from friends or file sharing . Record industry currency - the finished, mastered, shiny new product is now only distinguishable from what we can burn at home in that it has artwork, and sometimes that means a 'four page booklet' which is a piece of folded paper with the artist's name printed on the front and a tracklisting on the back. And the kids don't even want artwork! We do, us middle -aged men, the ones who got a whiff of new wave, or new romanticism or even got off our mash at Shoom - we want artwork, we demand packaging. I want the box set of Pink Floyd albums in replica sleeves. DON'T ASK ME WHY! I just like artwork and packaging. But if I was 15, I wouldn't give an arctic monkeys, I'd download the whole lot overnight, and spend the money on trainers and cider.
In his letter, my pal- like me, an A&R person - put faith in 'making great records' and to a large extent I agree with this. He proposed that a certain album that is currently selling really well, a CD that was one of the few 'must-haves' in 2007 is a record without a single duff track on it and that's why it's doing so well. Make records like this, my friend argued, and people will buy them. The problem is that most albums are, to quote my mate Sarah Cawood, "Two killers, the rest of it fillers." And now, given that we can get the two killers for the princely sum of £1.58 on iTunes, why should we pay a tenner for the rest of it in a plastic box? Oh, and it was Amy Winehouse's album which my mate was going on about, which, say what you want about the smack-taking, is an unarguably palatable record. Better than Mika's anyway.
So do I expect to make equally thrilling records with the artists I manage? Here's what I think: Always expect the least expected thing. I don't know if I appropriated that bit of unhelpful wisdom or whether it's based on my own A&R experiences but I know that it is pretty much always the case in the music business. No one wanted Radiohead apart from Keith Wozencroft - at EMI incidentally. Why? Because the singer had a wonky eye, their songs were so-so, and crucially, they were all different heights! Imagine the Beatles or the Stones if there'd been a really tall one and a really short one! Riddiculous! Like Radiohead were ever going to happen! Last year, everyone, every single record company and publisher were queuing up to sign a certain female singer. She was feted; wined and dined, and everyone thought that signing her was, in current industry parlance, a 'no brainer' A friend of mine in music publishing asked her what she wanted out of a career in music and rather than saying, 'artistic satisfaction', or 'to get my songs heard', or even 'to get laid by skinny-trousered Camden pretties', she was honest and said, "A Coutts bank account'. Her record bombed and I suspect she's still with Nat West.
So the swan who signs for millions will frequently end up in the bargain bin, whilst the ugly duckling, who a solitary A&R person begrudgingly does a development deal with, frequently blossoms into a million seller. How's that for a January mixed metaphor?
So I make no expectations on my charges. We're just getting them to write the best songs they can And with that in mind, we've decided it's time to do some recordings ...
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