The record business is, has always been, staffed with more than its fair share of prats, and CBS had sent along a prime example of an over-the-top smarmy “artist relations” guy who quite simply was the wrong man for the job. Perhaps they were expecting some kind of spoiled American superstar who wanted a lot of oil, but Bruce wasn’t that kind of guy. Walter Yetnikoff has called him boring, but he wasn’t. He was just very down to earth and remarkably normal.
Suddenly, he disappeared. He was found out front of the Odeon, seriously pissed off and ripping and trashing the bunting, pictures and displays. In the process he tore his fingers up. Despite that, the show was good, but not as good as the show in L.A., nowhere near as good. It was good enough, however, to show the people in London what he was about. But he was still very angry and stormed off the stage.
The entire hierarchy at CBS, Mo Oberstein and Paul Russell among them, came backstage to glad-hand, backstab, and to cart Bruce off like a triumphant hero to the postconcert bash. Stretch limos were lined up, but our man was in a rage.
“Get those people away from me, now!” he shouted. He locked his dressing room door, refusing even to talk to them. The hierarchy drifted off, hoping that the star would soon calm down and turn up at the party later. As soon as their dust had disappeared, Bruce unlocked the door. “Can you get me out of here?” he asked. “Let’s go somewhere.”
I found a taxi and we went back to my place in Barnes, where we sat up all night talking. His spirits should have been up, but instead he was very down. Everybody wants a piece of a hero, I suppose, but sometimes the hero says, “What took you so long? Where have you been hiding? Do you remember when you treated me like Mr. Nobody?” And that’s what this night had been all about, as far as Bruce was concerned. All the niggling little things came to a head. He moaned bitterly about CBS Records, saying he just wasn’t prepared to play their “star” game. At least, not just switching it on for their benefit.
Well, there’s nothing new about a rock star trashing his or her record company. When the steam had gone from his rant, I suggested that we watch a video. Home video had just started and I was proud of my huge, clunky Phillips machine. I stuck the tape in and we sprawled on the carpet watching a film about James Dean’s life. Bruce loved it, so we watched it again.
At dawn, Bruce went off to the Churchill and a couple of hours later, I went into my office at Polydor. Word had gotten around about what happened at the starless bash and even there, my name was mud. There they were, waiting to pour the champagne and no conquering hero to fete. “He can’t treat us like this!” Mo had apparently said. “We’ve sunk a lot of money into him. Has he flipped or what? Is he on something?”
Bruce went off to do some European dates, then returned to another concert at Hammersmith. This time, it was amazing. He blew them all away. Later, it all came apart at the seams again: his manager, the music publishing, his band, his career. The “future of rock and roll” ground to a dead halt. To be reborn yet again—and again.
41
I met Jack Nicholson when the Stones played Knebworth in 1976. We were up at the main house, all very convivial, getting on like two houses on fire, really hitting it off. After a while, I had to leave to go backstage to sort something out with the Stones. Jack asked me for a lift on my Harley Davidson, around the crowd, and into the main area.
I said, “Hop on.”
So there was Jack on the back of my Harley, waving away and giving that big stoned grin. It was just like that scene in Easy Rider where they played the song, “Wasn’t Born to Follow.” But this wasn’t a movie set or a road. I’d had a couple of drinks and the grass was very wet. We skidded sideways and crashed. The bike, Jack and I tumbled over and around, all arms and legs and spinning wheels.
Jack got up cussing at me and staggering about. So I just threw him into the Moet tent and ran off. I heard later that they helped him up and made him very welcome.
Somewhere else where the champagne flowed like water in those days was the big music industry market, known as MIDEM (le Marche International de la Musique). It was always held in Cannes, first at the old Casino, and then at the new purpose-built Palais. Right back from my Apple days, I had gone every year, as regular as clockwork. You soon got to know all the same old faces, who also turned up year after year. When we launched Apple Records, we papered the walls of our stand with the Apple logo, and had cases of apples to give away that, ridiculously, we shipped from London. I have a photograph of myself on the stand, with long hair and wearing a trendy wild silk gray suit. It sums the era up: a big carton of apples, stamped APPLE—LONDON, two open bottles of French beer and a Gauloise.
One year I was down there, it was perfect South of France weather for January: sensational food, blue skies, sparkling sea. I went to the Piano Bar, which was around the corner from the Martinez, where, naturally enough, someone was sitting playing the piano. Usually, they’re just tinklers, but this player was sensational. I sat and listened for a while, sipping a cold beer or two. In a break, I asked if he had a tape, not expecting one. He had one available. Back in London, at the Polydor post-MIDEM meeting, I was asked if I had found anything worthwhile. I said, “Yes, there was this pianist at the Piano Bar and he was rather good.”
We put the tape on and they went, ho-hum. “What does he look like?” I said, “He’s cute, a bit like Bobby Crush.” There were collective sighs around the table and someone said, “What the hell do we need another Bobby Crush for?” I subsided because I thought, quite right, they must know what they’re talking about. The pianist I didn’t discover was Richard Clayderman, who was discovered by someone else and went on to sell about 93 million albums.
Some MIDEMs are more memorable than others. In 1975 I attended as usual, with Marty Machat—Don Arden’s lawyer—because Don, who managed the careers of many stars such as Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, had just done a huge deal for ELO. As a birthday present, he had given the job of road managing Lynsey De Paul to his “little girl,” his sassy dark-eyed daughter, Sharon, who was about eighteen and stunning. I was with Marty, Don, Sharon and Lynsey de Paul—a real beauty with a waterfall of wavy blond hair and a sexy mole above her pouting mouth. We were in the Grand Casino, about to order dinner, but something seemed to be troubling them. Marty smiled and chatted, but I could sense a pervading undercurrent of tension.
I was aware that there was a “handbags at dawn” running battle between Patrick Meehan, who at the time ran NEMS, and Don—and then I saw Meehan sitting at the bar, tossing them back and glaring at our table. Before long, he was shouting, “Hey! Arden! You can’t do nothing right. You’re a fuckin’ wanker.” He gave a demonstration with his free hand.
I was just thinking, This should be interesting, when Sharon joined the fray in giving him some verbal back. Next thing I knew, Patrick jumped up from the bar, came across and smacked Don in the middle of his face so hard his nose all but disappeared. It was one hell of a punch. There was bone showing, blood gushing like a geyser, claret everywhere – I was stunned. Marty immediately jumped up and ran out fast. I should have joined him, but I was too slow. Then a big guy, like a gorilla, appeared out of nowhere. Pandemonium ensued. Sharon jumped up, shouted at Patrick, “You leave my dad alone!” She kicked his shins and pummeled his face as she yelled.
I was still watching, but it now had all the makings of a saloon bar brawl. I couldn’t sit there any longer so decided to stand up to the gorilla figure. I got up and drew one off. Hammered him. He went right across the dinner table. That did it. Noise. Chaos. Screaming. Suddenly there was a French siren straight out of a Clousseau film. Gendarmes came rushing in, batons waving, the whole bit. We all got arrested—except the guy I’d hit. He smirked evilly in my direction and rattled off a volley of French.
It transpired that he was head of security for the whole casino, so it was not looking terribly good as far as getting any dinner was concerned. Certainly no one came to take our order. Don was very upset, of course, shouting loud th
reats which, apart from the string of expletives, were unintelligible, because what was left of his nose was blocked with blood. I couldn’t move my hand, which felt broken. The gendarmes had painfully twisted my arm up behind my back. It sounded as though about a hundred girls were still screaming abuse and the waiters were gathered around in a circle, clapping. An ambulance was summoned for Don, and he was stretchered off to the hospital, with a towel around his head. We were carted off to the nick.
It took time to locate Marty the running lawyer, whose tennis habit seemed to have finally paid off. He had it on his toes at the first punch, but somehow, in a town of drunken music-biz lawyers (and this was before the advent of mobile phones) we found him. He turned up sheepishly but soon got into his shtick. Smoked his cigar furiously. Acted like George Bums who has been dragged out of bed. Leaned over the desk. Issued a couple of ultimatums. Said he’d call his buddy, the mayor of Cannes. The gendarmes decided to take no chances and we were sprung.
The next day it was all plaster of paris and bandages around the pool. Stiff drinks. Strong painkillers. We nursed the damage and talked of revenge and lawsuits. Don was vowing all kinds of murder and mayhem like an angry Schnozzle Durante which sounded like, “Arb godda hab ids guds fer fuffin’ garders. I phwhere I’ll fuffin’ rib is tids ock!” He’d probably already been on the phone to Horst Fascher in Hamburg with Sharon in her black mood egging him on.
I still have the photographs I took of our black eyes. In them, Sharon has the biggest shiner of all. The entire family was well known for being over the top. Sharon’s brother, David, was jailed for locking the family accountant in a cupboard in the man’s own office. It was straight out of a gangster comedy, “Get in the cupboard Mister Number Cruncher! I’m not letting you out until you tell me what you done wid our money and then I’m gonna kill you.” Someone called the police. They were not amused. When he got out of the cupboard, the accountant was delighted, convinced that he was off the hook. In the fullness of time, David was jailed and the accountant sued the Arden family for kidnapping, brutality, false imprisonment and millions. Once again Don was not a happy man.
The kidnap events were pre-Ozzy and pre-Don as Ozzy’s father-in-law. Sharon’s then-boyfriend was Adrian the driver, who went on to become head of promotion for Sony. Don was managing Ozzy’s band, Black Sabbath, at the time. There are two versions of how Sharon got together with Ozzy, and there is truth in both. When her parents split up, Sharon took her mum’s side. To put the boot in, she took Ozzy away from him and didn’t speak to Daddy for years. On the other side, it’s said that Don gave her Ozzy’s management contract as a wedding present, but it’s generally accepted that it was a matter of push and shove and expediency. Sharon had Ozzy, she wasn’t going to let her father manage him, so Don did the decent thing. But Sharon was very hard-nosed in those days. She was Lynsey de Paul’s road manager for a while but they drifted apart. It’s said Don put many of his business affairs, as well as his L.A. mansion, in Sharon’s name when he ran into some little tax difficulties. When it was all sorted, and he asked for everything back, Sharon smiled sweetly and told him to take a hike.
I first met Ozzy when Black Sabbath was living on a boat on the Thames. For four guys who were making big money, it was unbelievable. I have never seen such squalor in all my days. It was like a floating Dumpster, with a door instead of a lid. It stank of dead winos, vomit and blocked bilges. There were empty glassine baggies, overflowing ashtrays, rotten socks, dirty underwear, a blocked-up lavatory. It was a nightmare.
In complete contrast were the Osmonds, who Polydor asked me to promote. They were like babes in a sea of sharks. The Scotti Brothers, Tony and Ben, looked after them in the U.S. The Osmonds were signed to MGM Records. The promotion for most of MGM product was handled by the Scottis, probably because Ben and Tony had an excellent reputation for getting stuff played on the radio. Their track record was unparalleled in the industry. I had a similar reputation but the difference was simple. I went round asking people to play a record. They went round telling people to play a record.
Meanwhile, practically every party I went to in L.A. in some two or three decades had bowls of coke on every table, as casually placed as bowls of peanuts. The deals that went down were celebrated not with a glass of champagne, but with a dish of cocaine. It was like, “Help yourself.” I always stayed cool. I’d laugh and say, “No thanks, I’d rather have a drink”—which happened to be true. I’m a drinker, not a drugger; but it would have been so easy to slip into that way of life and obviously many people did. I saw scenes, which would seem wildly beyond belief, with some big names, big executives. It was all happening, continued to happen, still happens.
42
I first met a girl named Lesley Woodcock when I was head of International Press and Promotions at Polydor and I needed a new secretary. I got the personnel office to seek out some girls and interviewed about a dozen. But they’d all worked in the music industry before and I had my own way of doing things. I didn’t want anybody who had come from another record company, because they always seemed to say, “That’s not the way it was done at Chrysalis/EMI/Sony.”
Lesley was working for the Times Literary Supplement when the entire staff of the Times group went on strike for over a year from November 1978 to November 1979 because the union objected to new technology being brought in which they said would lose jobs. Everyone was getting union scale but weren’t doing anything and Lesley was a doer. After a couple of months she was bored to death with just sitting around and being paid for nothing. She put job applications in to various places and had two appointments: me and the drama department at Thames TV. She had more or less made up her mind to take the TV job but I talked her into coming to work for me. She was lovely. Very shy, didn’t argue and seemed to know just how to do things. Right from the start, she had a feel for it all and just got on with the job. She was so good at it that I didn’t take much notice of her for a long time. I was very busy and was living with someone else, a delightful and fiery Irish girl named Bernadette Sheridan.
It was round about the time that The Who got together again shortly after Keith Moon died, with ex-Faces drummer, Kenney Jones, and I set up a small promotion tour to launch their 1979 movie, The Kids Are Alright. They were doing Glasgow on a Friday night and I was sitting in the office wondering what I should do and suddenly I said to Lesley, who was working late, “Book a couple of flights up to Glasgow and a hotel and we’ll go up and see the lads.” I thought it might be fun and that we ought to show the group some support from Polydor. I didn’t really need a reason, but think I said to her something like, “It’s about time that you saw what it’s like for a band on the road. You’ve never been to any of the gigs. This will be a good start.” I was joking. The Who were pretty wild. I should have said, “Come on, jump in at the deep end.”
Lesley was very excited. She phoned her mum, said she was off to Glasgow for the night. I think her mum was a bit stunned. She was a woman to reckon with. She had been the editor in chief’s assistant at the Mirror Group of newspapers, then she worked for Robert Maxwell, who bought the Mirror Group, until he ran off with all the money and was eventually found dead, having either been pushed or jumped from his yacht off the Canary Islands. As he was a former secret agent, many rumors circulated about his demise.
Glasgow was fantastic, a wonderful baptism for Lesley into that world. The Who were incredible. As always, the volume was just unbelievable. They just tore the roof off. When they’d finished, we went backstage, but true to their reputation, by the time we got there “backstage” didn’t really exist as such anymore. It was like a building site in Berlin at the end of the war. To say that The Who had trashed it completely wouldn’t do the havoc, or them, justice. The ceiling had been smashed. What must have once been delivered to the dressing room as, “the catering,” was now everywhere: all over the walls, all over the floor, all over The Who. It was like a “work in progress.”
Keith Moon must have been
smiling down. Without getting in the way, I smiled at the lads and waved. Lesley’s mouth dropped open. Without missing a beat, Pete would pass by holding a guitar by the neck like an axe, manic grin, huge spliff between his teeth—obviously on a mission of mayhem and mass destruction—and mumble, “All right, Tone?” HACK! BANG! CRUNCH! SMASH!
“Fine Pete. And yourself?”
John Wolf, their tour manager, was standing to one side gnawing at a complete haunch of venison en croute. It was a fit and proper “Return of The Who”—and I was delighted. We went back to the hotel and were up the rest of the night just laughing and drinking as we swapped old Keith stories. He really did seem to be there that night. Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey are extremely funny and entertaining men, and that night they were happy and on form. Lesley was just speechless. It was the stuff that she had only read about, and she loved it. The theater of rock ’n’ roll. The Electric Circus.
In the morning we went to a preview of The Kids Are Alright. Afterward, I said to her, “Would you like to stay over and go on to the gig at Edinburgh tomorrow?” She said, “Oh can we?” So we did.
When we got back to the office I started to look at her in a new light. As the weeks went by I occasionally took her for lunch or drinks after work, but nothing came of it because of Bernadette. Then I went freelance and Lesley and I lost touch for two or three years. She went to work for Elton John at Rocket Records. Apparently, she enjoyed the reputation of being the butchest person in the building. She said it was fun, but that there was “lots of daily emotion.” From the office boy upward, the tantrums and backstabbing atmosphere got to her in the end and she went to work for Richard Branson at Virgin Records as a promotions assistant.
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