How did you get the job as a booking agent in the music industry?
Music was always a major influence in my life. I knew instinctively from an early age that it held a power to communicate and to change things. From my very earliest days, listening to the radio was a huge window to my world. I listened to the top 30 album chart show every week, and from age eleven I had my first record player. I still remember the huge disappointment in 1963 that Christmas when my uncle had given me an album by Freddie and the Dreamers instead of the Beatles album I had asked him for. He told me that to him, “all the groups sound the same.” But even at such an early age, I knew that was completely wrong!
A huge influence on me was the first album by the Velvet Underground. Age fifteen in 1967 when it was released, I used to play this album repeatedly, holding the record player loudspeaker so close to my chest so that the vibrations would literally pass through my body. Later in my music career, I was to act as agent and manager for John Cale, which I always considered to be an honor.
I listened to a huge spectrum of music. At home, my father would play jazz and classical music all the time. I listened to the “alternative” radio stations that played more adventurous music, such as Radio Luxembourg, and when pirate radio stations began, I graduated to listening to Radio Caroline and others. One very significant pirate station was Radio Geronimo, who opened my ears and mind to many of the American groups that I really rated — the Doors, Steve Miller Band, Joe Walsh, bands like Quicksilver Messenger Service, Love, Little Feat, J.J. Cale, Allman Brothers, Spirit, Janis Joplin, and the like. Along with the US bands I mention above, I took chances and listened to more obscure music and acts such as Can, Amon Duul II Nektar, and so on. And more obvious acts too, like Led Zeppelin, King Crimson, Simon and Garfunkel, John Martyn, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Cream. And obviously the Beatles and Stones and the other bands of that era.
It was completely obvious to me as a teenager that music was my major interest. I played in live bands—first bass guitar and then lead guitar—and I wrote some songs too. But I considered myself as having more potential than just “being a musician,” and decided that I wanted to look for more of an executive role in the industry. I used to go to as many concerts as I could possibly afford to, plus of course to the many free concerts that were available in the late sixties and seventies. I grew up to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd,
adopting them as my band on the release of their awesome first album, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, in 1967. This record was so completely different to everything I had ever heard before.
I saw Pink Floyd repeatedly from their earliest years going forward. Sometimes my own band would play at the same venue as them—but never on the same program. As well as seeing many of my heroes play concerts in London, I would travel to see bands. In 1968, at age sixteen, I hitched to the first ever Isle of Wight Festival, where I saw heroes Jefferson Airplane amongst many others. On the same day, after seeing the Stones play their famous concert at London’s Hyde Park in 1969 (just after Brian Jones’s death), I walked through Hyde Park to the Royal Albert Hall and that evening saw Chuck Berry and the Who. I don’t think there could ever be a better day to enjoy as a teenager. I have seen many of the greatest acts live, ranging from Pink Floyd to MC5 to the Ramones to Springsteen and Santana, David Bowie, and many other legends.
I was also at the first ever Glastonbury Festival in 1970, again traveling on my own, hitching rides. It was known then as the Pilton Arts and Music Festival. It was a small affair, no more than 1,500 people, but it was amazing seeing the bands—T. Rex and Donovan, Country Joe, and many others—and being with like-minded people. Music commanded my heart with its strong alternative message and its counterculture agenda. I was at the Who show in Leeds when they recorded Live at Leeds. I saw Jimi Hendrix play live only once, at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970. This was weeks before his untimely death, and actually a big disappointment. Jimi no longer had the Experience as his band, but the rather ragged Band of Gypsys performing newer songs and none of my favorites.
I grabbed the possibilities that music opened up with both hands and wanted to make sure that it would be a significant and deep part of me.
Music was like my constant companion—it could soothe or stimulate, and move me in ways that I can’t really put into words. I recognized and embraced its power.
I soon worked out that one of the few ways into the music industry was to go to university to become the entertainments officer of the student union and promote the live entertainment. So that was my career plan. I went to the University of East Anglia in Norwich in 1972 and worked on the entertainments committee in my first year, sitting in on the committee that decided the music we would book.
In the summer of 1973, I went to the US for the first time. I saw the Eagles in Central Park, New York, in 1973, as well as the Doors, John McLaughlin, and Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Sly and the Family Stone. I went to Watkins Glen Festival and saw the Allman Brothers, Doobiee Brothers, and Grateful Dead. Music stayed my priority.
And that autumn, 1973, I was elected as the supremo, the entertainments officer. I had a good and enthusiastic team around me and a high profile, as I played frequently in live bands on campus, and so this was a perfect fit for me. I booked a wide and diverse program, which varied from the commercial to the interesting—Spencer Davis Group, 10cc—and also in part indulged my personal taste with acts like John Martyn and Country Joe McDonald, most famous for his anti–Vietnam War song, Gentle Giant, Procol Harum, and also the Robin Trower Band. Another highlight for me was booking Captain Beefheart, who I simply worshipped for his amazing album Clear Spot. It is definitely one of my best ever ten albums.
I had done well commercially with the bands I had booked, and we realized that we would make an end-of-year profit with this final concert with the Captain. But soon after I had booked them, I found out that the Captain had fired the Magic Band, and was touring with a completely different lineup. Then I heard the new album released on Virgin, which was a million miles away from Clear Spot. Instead of a masterpiece, it was a relatively disappointing “love” album. I renegotiated the fee downwards to bitter resistance from the
agent, but still paid enough to keep the show. I discounted the fee because I thought that was commercially correct. But also because I was never going to hear live Mr. Zoot Horn Rollo hitting that magic note and letting it float.
After my year of booking the bands at university, I was offered a job at a booking agency in London and worked there in the summer of 1974. But it was not the best environment for me. I did not rate the bands I was booking very highly, and I didn’t really see it as a good prospect. After working there for three months over the summer university holiday, I left the job and went back to Norwich that autumn to complete the final year of my degree. I graduated in 1975, when unemployment was high, and then I had to do some jobs that I hated and were in severe conflict with my values and what I wanted from my life.
When finally in 1977 I got a second job offer as a booking agent, I went for it. I worked in a small agency in the amazing period when punk and new wave had just started. Every kind of music was described as punk or new wave, including Blondie and Talking Heads, right through to the Damned, Elvis Costello, and the Stranglers, to Tom Robinson. One of the first tours I was a part of was the debut tour by Stiff Records. Dave Robinson at Stiff was a genius innovator; he put all the bands on his label on the same tour, so the lineup was both eclectic and spectacular. Established rockers like Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe shared the stage with Ian Dury and the Blockheads, a very fresh and exciting Elvis Costello and the Attractions, the Damned, Wreckless Eric, and 999. The marketing was both wild and effective too. The tour T-shirt read: If it ain’t Stiff, it ain’t worth a fuck. This tour showed me the immediacy and impact of good planning. Overnight the tour was successful and many extra shows were added. All the musicians from the bands would get up onstage for the end of the show and sing what became the tour anthem, “Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll.”
This time around I had no doubts, I was exactly where I wanted to be: at the center of music as it happened and made its impact on the world.
More to come soon including some historic photos…!