Hunky Dory (Who Knew)

by Laurence Myers

  In the same way that I had gained knowledge about the music business, Ellis Goodman, through his clients, had gained knowledge and expertise in the whisky business. We both quit our practice in 1971, but, for years after, we kept a 50/50 interest in each other’s work. In all of the years that we were together, we never had a written contract, never exchanged a cross word and we are still close friends.

  It’s hard to be good at something you don’t like and I hated being a chartered accountant. The statute of limitations is six years for a simple contract, so I can now confess that my advice to clients was not always sound. I used to come home to my wife and say, ‘Thank God I’m not a doctor, I might kill people.’ Aware of my shortcomings, I relied a lot on the knowledgeable people around me, but it is not easy to keep on saying, ‘Just got to pop to the loo,’ to a client so I could nip next door to a colleague and ask their advice. I remember on one occasion when I was obliged to advise ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to a client there was nobody around to ask, so I gazed out of my office window looking profound and thinking that if a bus goes by before a taxi I’ll say ‘Yes’. There was a 50/50 chance of being right, and I’ve acted on worse odds for myself. Another problem for me was that professional etiquette at the time prevented me from going after other accountants’ clients. You had to wait until the client approached you, and it was difficult for me to meet people in the music business that I believed needed my help and not be able to say words to the effect, ‘I can get you a million dollars.’

  Roger, my brother, at the age of twenty-three replaced me as a partner in Goodman Myers & Co. and he continued to look after the Rolling Stones. Roger left the practice in 1974 to go into business with Tony Visconti, producer of Marc Bolan and David Bowie. They started a company called Good Earth. Tony was married to Mary Hopkin, the sweet-voiced girl who had a surprise hit in 1968 with ‘Those Were The Days’, produced by Paul McCartney. This came about because Paul’s friend Twiggy had seen Mary sing on Opportunity Knocks, a UK talent show, and brought Mary to Paul’s attention. Paul had the song ‘Those Were The Days’ in his head for years. He had heard it sung by Gene and Francesca Raskin, an obscure American cabaret duo who worked at the Blue Angel, a small club in Mayfair that Marsha and I occasionally frequented. He instantly fell in love with the song and thought that he might record it himself. Well, the Blue Angel did serve alcohol.

  Paul spotted that Mary’s voice was perfect for ‘Those Were The Days’ and he signed her to Apple Records to record it. The result was a No. 1 record in the UK, sales of 1.5 million copies in the US and only ‘Hey Jude’ kept it off the No. 1 spot in the American charts. It was the magic combination of that voice and that song that had interested McCartney. They subsequently made a few records together, which did not work, and he called in Mickie Most, (small world), who produced a couple of records including ‘Knock, Knock, Who’s There?’ for Great Britain’s entry in the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest. Mickie told me he couldn’t stand being in the studio with Mary, and Apple brought in Visconti, who made an album that was closer to her folk roots. The album got no support at all from the now disarrayed Apple Records, and she left the label.

  The Raskins cabaret duo never wrote another successful song, but financially they did not need to and they retired, very rich, to Pollença – a small village in Majorca. Mike and Penny Leander had a house in Pollença and they and the Raskins were part of small circle of expats. Marsha and I often stayed at the Leanders’ house in Majorca, and one year Penny Leander, who loves to cause mischievous fun, told the Raskins that their friend Laurence ‘the important record company man’ was their houseguest. As a result, wherever we went to dinner, the Raskins would unexpectedly appear to play and sing their current summer song ‘When Manolo Played Guitar (In the Café by the Sea)’. There was usually a crowd of us at the table and we all had to stop eating to listen to what was a terrible song. For all the wrong reasons, I had ‘When Manolo Played Guitar’ in my head for years,

  Roger and Visconti’s Good Earth made records with Mary and Judie Tzuke. They managed Argent and were agents for The Average White Band. Then Roger started a promotions division, bringing James Brown, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry to Europe. Roger never mastered promoter Don Arden’s trick of hanging difficult artists from windows and he shortly moved on to what would be a spectacularly successful career in the restaurant and hotel business. In 1978, with his friend Alan Lubin, he opened Peppermint Park in London’s Covent Garden. It was an American-style diner/soda fountain, revolutionary at the time, and it really took off. It became even more famous after a party that I gave there for The Buddy Holly Story, a film that I distributed through GTO Films. Guests included wild-man Keith Moon, The Who’s drummer, who died at his home the next day, and the press was full of photos of Keith and Paul McCartney at the party with their wives.

  Roger later started the Café Rouge restaurant group, building it to a chain of 130 restaurants before selling it to the Whitbread pub group. He then, with some partners, started the Punch Tavern group, one of the largest pub owners in the UK. Punch went public in 2002 and Roger cashed in and moved to St Lucia, where he and his wife Lee own The Sugar Beach, one of the best hotels in the Caribbean.

  The three generations of our families are all very close, which is one of the great joys of my life.

  19. THE JEFF BECK BAND AND ROD STEWART

  In 1967 Mickie produced ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ for Jeff Beck. It was a great song written by Scott English and Larry Weiss, two highly successful Americans. Larry Weiss wrote ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ and in the seventies I did a deal with him to develop the song into a film. At the same time I also did a deal to make Elton John and Bernie Taupin’s ‘Bennie and The Jets’ into a movie. I got close, but neither of them got made into films.

  One of the many curses of being a film producer is that you often nearly get films made and it keeps you in the game. There are lots of other curses, too many to mention here, but if you get the chance, have a look at the 2002 documentary Lost in La Mancha, the story of Terry Gilliam’s doomed attempt to get a film based on Don Quixote off the ground. At the time of writing, he had finally completed it as The Man who Killed Don Quixote and it was awaiting distribution.

  Singer/songwriter Scott English (along with Richard Kerr) wrote ‘Mandy’ for Barry Manilow. Scott actually recorded it himself in under the title of ‘Brandy’, and had a modest hit with it. Arista Records owned the rights to Scott’s recording for America and when Clive Davis, the legendary boss of Arista heard it, he changed the name to ‘Mandy’ and gave it to Barry Manilow to record. Scott told me that he was initially pissed off that his own version was not put out, but when he received his writer’s share of the multi-million-selling Manilow version, he felt better.

  Scott came to live in London and we became quite friendly. He was a very funny guy who said that he wanted to write a song called ‘Don’t Fuck Around with Love’, which appealed to my sense of humour. In November 2018 I had dinner with Scott after not seeing each other for some forty-five years and it was great to catch up. He told me that he had sent an unfinished version of ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ to Mickie Most and Mickie had asked him to finish it. He told Mickie that he thought that the song was crap and he did not want to finish it. Mickie, who knew a hit song when he heard one, summoned Scott to the office, called in his secretary and made Scott dictate some lyrics there and then. Scott assured me that this was the reason that the song had lines like ‘Flies are in your pea soup baby, they’re waving at me.’

  I was in the studio when Mickie was mixing ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ and he asked me what I thought of it. I told him that I loved it but thought he should drop the guitar solo in the middle. This is why I am not a record producer.

  Jeff Beck went on the road as The Jeff Beck Group with Ronnie Wood on rhythm guitar and Rod Stewart as his singer. I was the accountant. The band members were Jeff ’s employees and, like any other PAYE employee, a payroll tax had to be deducted from their wages. They
were paid on a performance basis and, as there was not a gig every night, the band’s wages varied from week to week. The plan was that each Monday Jeff would give us money to place in our clients’ account, to cover the band’s previous week’s wages. We would then calculate the statutory deductions for tax and provide cheques for the band members.

  Rod wanted his cheque on a Friday and he would come to Goodman Myers’s office to collect it. The problem was that Jeff ’s Monday payment into the Goodman Myers client account drifted later and later into the week, to the point where I would be phoning Jeff on a Friday to tell him that Rod Stewart was in reception waiting to be paid. I explained to Rod that we could not be expected to pay him if we had not received the money and maybe he would like to come back on Monday. Rod assured me that he would not like to come back on Monday; he would like to wait at our offices until he had been paid. Jeff, being a musician, was not an early riser and Rod would hang around our reception, chatting up our pretty receptionist whilst waiting to be paid. Eventually a roadie would turn up with the amount due to each of the band members, and we would quickly calculate Rod’s wages after tax and give him a cheque.

  One Friday, my partner Ellis had a prospective client, an important city type, coming to see him. Every time Ellis passed through reception he saw this tall, lanky lad in tight tartan trousers, sprawled out in reception with his feet on our reception coffee table, disturbing the nice piles of business magazines that Ellis had set out to impress the prospective client. He asked Rod what he was doing. Rod explained that he came in to see me on Fridays to collect his wage cheque. Ellis, fearful that his prospective client would be deterred by such an untidy and unwholesome sight, popped his head around my office door to ask me to have this person removed. I was not in my office so Ellis went back to reception and politely asked Rod if he would kindly remove his feet from our coffee table, go away and only come back when he had a proper appointment. Rod, who is actually quite a gentleman, apologised and left. Throwing Rod Stewart out of your office was not a smart move. Who knew?

  20. THE BEATLES AND APPLE CORP

  When Brian Epstein died in 1967, Allen Klein was so convinced that he would become the manager of The Beatles, he even put a date on it: the end of 1968. To many this seemed like wishful thinking and Chris Most bet him a thousand pounds that it wouldn’t happen.

  Fast-forward to January 1969, and Allen Klein had his first meeting with John Lennon, who asked him to look after his business affairs. The following evening he met with all of The Beatles, when Ringo and George asked him to look after their affairs as well. Paul vociferously declined. Allen was now effectively managing three-quarters of The Beatles. It was a month later than the date of his bet with Chris Most, but she wouldn’t let him off. I suggested that she should only claim a quarter of the bet, but she insisted on full payment, which I thought was rather mean of her.

  At the time, Paul was engaged to be married to Linda Eastman, the daughter of a prominent New York lawyer who had extensive interests in both art and the music business. Linda’s brother John was a partner in the firm. The Eastmans loathed Allen, no doubt because when Brian Epstein died they fancied taking control of The Beatles affairs themselves. The Eastmans were from a very uptown background and they made no attempt to hide the fact that they looked down on Allen, regarding him as a Jew with no class. This made Lennon, who was very conscious and proud of his own working-class background, an even stronger supporter of Allen. There were vicious confrontations between Allen and the Eastmans and eventually it was agreed that Allen would look after The Beatles’ business affairs and the Eastmans would become their American attorneys.

  Brian Epstein had run the management of The Beatles and his other artists through a company called NEMS. He had named the company after North End Music Store, which had been opened as part of the family’s thriving furniture store in Liverpool, where Brian had his office. There was often a crowd of excited teenagers waiting to get into the Cavern Club, a short walk away from Brian’s office. Intrigued, he went down into the small basement space to see what all the fuss was about, and the rest, as they say, is history.

  His elder brother Clive had taken over the running of NEMS after Brian’s death. Clive was thrown in at the deep end to a world which he had no knowledge of and in which he had no real interest in, and The Beatles were left without anyone to give them direction and guidance. It was no secret that the Apple finances were totally out of control. The news of the profligacy had reached New York and that was when Allen got on a plane to London.

  No doubt flushed with their new ‘freedom’, the four lads from Liverpool had decided to start their own company, which they called Apple Corp. Allen asked me to go to their offices to prepare a report on the company’s current financial position and make recommendations for its future running. The Beatles’ wanted Apple to be a company that any creative people could come to – not just musicians – to get financial support. Lennon described it as, ‘Artistic freedom within a business structure’. You are already wincing, and you are right.

  They had taken over a beautiful period building at 3 Savile Row. It was on its roof that they famously gave their last performance in 1969, filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Although totally unannounced, the word quickly spread and the surrounding rooftops soon filled with lunchtime office staff who could not believe their luck. The streets became blocked with traffic as passers-by stopped to look up to see where the music was coming from. The Savile Row police station was a couple of hundred yards away and the police reluctantly asked The Beatles to stop so that order could be restored to the West End streets. Unfortunately, I was installed in the Savile Row offices too late to witness this historic event.

  I started my investigation and what I learned was astonishing. Under the Apple brand, the boys started a record company, a film company and a music publishing company, all to be run by them out of the Savile Row offices. In the basement was the workshop of Alex Mardas, who at The Beatles’ expense was developing amazing inventions that could never work. He installed a ‘state of the art’ recording studio, which also never worked. They opened a fashion boutique in Baker Street, which I had often passed on my way to work. The building was painted with psychedelic designs and looked amazing and the shop was stocked with the tie-dye and Indian-influenced fashions of the day. Clothes flew out of the store, most of it stolen by staff and customers. There was no control whatsoever and the shop was closed after six months, with The Beatles instructing that any stock left should be given away. An experienced American music executive called Ron Kass had been hired to run Apple Records but he had not managed to exercise much control and one of the first things that Allen did was fire him.

  The Beatles themselves seldom turned up at the offices, other than George Harrison, who was sequencing his new album. It was a time when unreleased records were sampled on individually recorded acetates which could not be played too often without loss of quality and George sat alone in a room for days surrounded by piles of acetates of each song, trying to decide the running order. The acetates would have cost a fortune but George only played each one once, selecting a fresh one for each play. John once came into the office where I was working. He had no idea what I was doing there, and I explained that I was trying to find out what had happened to The Beatles’ money. Anxious to find a reason to spend time with him, I started talking to him about my preliminary findings, but he did not seem to be interested, surprised or concerned. He just said, ‘Really?’ and wandered out again.

  I did get to spend time with Lennon when Marsha and I had dinner with Allen and Betty and John and Yoko at the very plush Le Gavroche restaurant in Mayfair, Allen’s favourite haunt. Yoko, who had yet to become the self-confident lady of later years, mostly clung monkey-like to John’s arm and communicated with us by whispering in John’s ear. John was very relaxed and chatted away about his early life when he, Paul McCartney and George Harrison played skiffle music in a group called The Quarrymen.

  I
told him that when I was about sixteen I had played in a skiffle group myself. I had to admit that sadly I wasn’t on guitar (which would have required me to buy a guitar, which I could not afford, and learn three chords) but rather the lowly washboard. Skiffle as a musical force never took off in America, and John and I had to explain to Allen that it was a usually played by a few guys who knew three chords on a guitar, accompanied by a tea-chest bass player and someone creating a beat with thimbles on a washboard. Skiffle repertoire was mainly Lonnie Donegan songs or folk songs borrowed from American heroes Pete Seeger or The Weavers. The skiffle craze only lasted about three years in the mid-fifties and Allen was surprised to hear how many other early English pop groups had been inspired, including the Stones and the UK’s first young pop idol, Tommy Steele.

  Lonnie Donegan outgrew skiffle and became a wide-appeal entertainer. Coincidentally, when I wrote this in March 2018, I had been on the set of Judy, the film I am producing about Judy Garland, starring Renée Zellweger in the title role. In the scene I was watching, Lonnie Donegan was standing by to go on stage instead of Judy Garland at The Talk of The Town, a popular London cabaret club in the sixties. Miss Garland was going through a terrible period of addiction to drink and prescription drugs and was incapable of reliably turning up. Lonnie was a big enough star to appease the audience in her absence. Sadly, Judy Garland died of a drug overdose a few months later.