At the dinner, John discussed the problems that he was having renovating Tittenhurst Park, an early Georgian mansion near Ascot that he had recently bought as a home for himself and Yoko. The house was Grade II-listed, and he could not get the permissions that he needed to make sweeping changes, including removing most of the walls. In that wonderful Liverpool accent, he told us, ‘I can’t see the point of having separate rooms to sleep in, eat in, fuck in and piss in.’ Considering his predilection for ‘bed-ins’, it was maybe more than an idle thought. In the meantime, he and Yoko were living in a caravan parked in the seventy-two acres of ground that came with the house. He ultimately had to compromise but he did put a lake in the grounds without bothering to get planning permission and an unauthorised recording studio where he recorded some important albums for The Plastic Ono Band. When he moved permanently to America in 1971, he sold the house to Ringo, who had more traditional taste. I once went to see him there, and it was indeed beautiful.
John’s most memorable remark of that unforgettable evening at Le Gavroche was about the time he was leaving school and his headmaster advised, ‘Stop spending so much time playing the guitar, Lennon, you’ll never make a living with that.’
The cost of running Apple’s Savile Row operation was ridiculous. Many of the mainly overpaid staff made free use of Apple Corp’s account with a minicab company to take them to and from work. The company had an account with a wine merchant, which was also cheerfully abused by staff. There was no semblance of discipline and staff came and went at their own convenience. The Beatles were paying for the good time that was being had by all. My report showed how and where substantial savings could be made and, armed with the specifics, Allen waded in and sorted out the mess.
I ran into Ron Kass again – the guy Allen had fired – in the mid-seventies. He was by now husband No. 3 for Joan Collins, who I met socially from time to time. One evening, we bumped into each other at the Tramp nightclub and I mentioned to Joan that we were planning to rent a home in Los Angeles for a month in the summer. She suggested that I rented hers. I had been to her London home, close to where we lived in Highgate, to pick up our son who had been to her own son’s birthday party, and it was not a modest place. I had never been to her home in LA but I remembered that Sue St John, a mutual friend who was close to Joan, telling me it was spectacular. It was certainly big enough to take my family and I would be sleeping in Joan Collins’ bed, so it sounded a great idea. Joan asked me to ‘be a darling and talk to Ron about the business side’.
Joan was pretty broke – this was before she made The Bitch and The Stud, and a long time before Dynasty – and Ron asked for four thousand pounds, a very reasonable sum, in cash. As further enticement, Ron offered to throw in the two cars that they kept in LA. Then, in what he clearly thought was a clincher, dropping his voice to a conspirator’s whisper, he promised to speak to Walter – the all-powerful maître d’ of the Polo Lounge at the Beverley Hills hotel – to make sure that I had Joan’s booth whenever I went there. You may recall that one’s positioning in a fashionable LA watering hole was vital to one’s prestige in town. The red leather booths at the Polo Lounge were up there with the window tables at Spago, and Ron assured me that Joan was always afforded the No. 1 booth. This was an offer I clearly could not refuse. And I didn’t.
I went to the house a couple of days before my family arrived to make sure that all would be in order for their arrival. Ron’s sister was staying and she showed me around. The house was in Bel Air, a very exclusive gated community. It was close to the house that was used in the filming of The Beverly Hillbillies, a popular comedy TV show about a country man who strikes oil on his land and moves his family to Beverly Hills. Most of the people who live in Bel Air have struck oil in some form or other and there is no social housing on the estate.
Ron’s sister left and I turned on the TV. There was a remote, something that we were yet to get in England, and I clicked the button and sank into a couch the size of a small ocean liner to watch TV. The TV did not go on but the doorbell rang. Fighting my way from under the cushions I went and opened the door. A mountainous security guard in uniform, a huge gun at his hip, blocked the ever-present Californian sunshine out. He asked if the owners were at home and I said no, I was alone. He asked me for the security code, which I did not have. He asked me some other security questions, none of which I could answer, but I did offer to give him Joan’s telephone number in London. He got on to his walkie-talkie and I thought he was going to call for back-up. I had visions of being read my rights, cuffed, and placed in the back of a ‘black-and-white’ by Starsky and Hutch. Disappointedly after listening to his walkie-talkie, he told me to ‘have a nice day’ and drove off.
I went back to my couch and tried again to turn on the TV with the remote. The doorbell rang, it was the BFG again. My TV remote was not remotely connected to the TV. It was a panic alarm connected to the Beverly Hills security patrol. Who knew?
The house was indeed spectacular, if suited to a particular taste. Huge, its roof-height living area dotted with silver lamé faux-palm trees, the place had more glitz than Ziggy Stardust’s make-up box. There were photos of Joan everywhere and for Marsha’s arrival I had carefully arranged a large photo of Joan by my side of the bed, with a single red rose next to it. She was so amused I discovered another spare bedroom.
We had a great time there. We had a big party for Marsha’s fortieth birthday, which was a huge success. I told all my LA friends that we could ‘do lunch’ at my reserved booth at the Polo Lounge. They were very impressed.
21. MIKE LEANDER – THE MAN WHO ENCOURAGED ME TO CHANGE MY BUSINESS LIFE
I think that Mike Leander really understood my frustration at being an accountant, in a career I did not really enjoy. He had started his own working life in a solicitor’s office but his first love was music, so he gave up law after a year and got a job as an office junior for a small music publisher. He had a natural gift for orchestration, which he studied in his spare time at Trinity College London. He tried his hand at songwriting and production, without much success. When he was twenty, Dick Rowe of Decca Records gave him a three-year deal as a musical director. Dick famously turned down The Beatles, a fact that has become synonymous with his name. His home electricity bill was probably addressed to Mr Dick Rowe-Turneddownthebeatles Esq.
Dick Rowe was by no means the only one who passed on talent. About twenty years ago, Jocelyn, a close friend of ours, had a holiday home in a small village in Tuscany where her Italian neighbour had a son who was a singer. Jocelyn told the neighbour about her friend Laurence, the ‘grande uomo nel mondo della musica’. Suitably impressed, the neighbour asked me if I wanted to manage her son Andrea, who was struggling to earn a living as a cabaret singer in Tuscan holiday resorts. I responded ‘Grazie but no grazie,’ because, as I said to my wife, ‘what am I supposed to do with a blind Italian opera singer?’
It gets worse. In the 1970s, Norman Sheffield and his brother had a management company within his Trident Studios group of companies. Norman asked me if I wanted to buy the management company, whose main asset was its contract with a band called Queen. Norman claimed that he wanted to concentrate on the studio, which was his core business. I had heard rumours that the band were unhappy with the Sheffields and if they had come to me of their own accord I would, of course, have been interested. But I was sure that the band would not want to be ‘sold on’ as part of a company, I was up to my ears with my existing successful artists, and I did not think that it was worth pursuing. My only regret is that, had I pulled it off, I would have featured in the huge hit film Bohemian Rhapsody. I would fancy George Clooney to have played me, but I fear that they would more likely have cast Danny DeVito.
In 1988 I got to know Brian May a little. He was a regular after-show visitor to the delightful-in-every-way Anita Dobson who, at the time, was starring opposite Adam Faith in Budgie, the first musical that I ever produced. Brian was about to get divorced from his first wife
and Anita did not feel secure about her future relationship with him. This is when I learned that the duties of the producer of a musical extended to reassuring your lead actress that she would marry the man she loved, so please stop crying. There was a lovely Don Black/Mort Shuman ballad in the show called ‘In One of My Weaker Moments’, which Anita told me she sometimes struggled to perform because of her romance with Brian. I would sometimes chat with Brian as he waited for Anita after the show. It was all a bit teenagery, as Anita would later ask me ‘Did he say anything?’ Brian and Anita made their own record of ‘In One of My Weaker Moments’ in 1989, which made me very happy. Indeed, they did marry and are still together, the marriage having run a lot longer than the show did. Budgie The Musical closed in three months, losing all of the investors’ money.
The extraordinarily talented Brian May was a lovely gentle man, unlike Adam Faith who, whilst mildly talented, was a nightmare in so many ways that I could write a book entirely about him. Maybe I will. All right, one story now. He was impossible about publicity. His test was ‘Would Marlon Brando do it?’ To which my answer should have been, ‘Of course not, you schmuck, but you’re not Marlon Brando.’ Instead I felt obliged to cajole and beg him to promote Budgie. We were offered Russell Harty, then the top TV plug programme. The show’s format was to feature three guests, but Adam would only do it if he had the show to himself. I pointed out that the line-up for the previous week had been Dustin Hoffman, Sting and Dave Allen, to which he replied ‘Well they’re c***s.’ This was just one example of his delusional sense of importance, and even though he was the star of the show, I should have fired him before we opened. It was my first production. A later, more experienced version of me would have done so.
In 1981 Brian Brolly, who was then managing Andrew Lloyd Webber, asked me if I wanted to invest £130,000 in Cats. He was quite desperate and offered me the record rights and an interest in all future productions. Comfortable in the thought that nobody would be interested in a musical using the poetry of T. S. Eliot, I said, ‘No’. To add to my foolishness, when I went to the opening night I was convinced that I had made the right decision. The show of course has played for years in every major country in the world and those bloody cats’ eyes advertising the show follow me round at every airport. Please don’t tell anyone about this.
Back to Mike Leander. Whilst he was with Decca, Mike Leander worked with the Rolling Stones, Billy Fury, Marc Bolan, Shirley Bassey and many other stars of the day. He released two albums under the Mike Leander Orchestra banner without great success, but to enormous critical acclaim. Jerry Wexler, the revered head of A&R at Atlantic Records, flew Mike over to New York to work with Ben E. King, The Drifters and other artists on the Atlantic label.
At the time I first met Mike, he was working with MCA Records as an in-house producer. He had already written ‘Lady Godiva’ for Peter and Gordon (with Charlie and Gordon Mills), ‘Early in the Morning,’ a big hit for Vanity Fare written with Eddie Seago, and a couple of hits for Paul Jones. He had done the fabulous string arrangement for The Beatles’ ‘She’s Leaving Home’ for the Sgt. Pepper album, the creative work that he was most proud of until the day he died. Mike was executive producer of Jesus Christ Superstar, one of the first concept albums and the vehicle that set Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice on the road to success.
I have a theory about why the Jesus Christ Superstar album was so successful. At the time of its release, there was a strong movement amongst young Christians in America known then as ‘Jesus freaks’, maybe born out of the general hippy philosophy of peace and love. The telling of the story of Christ in such a modern manner had enormous appeal to them and they made the album a huge hit, leading to a Broadway production in 1971. This is not to take away from Andrew and Tim being in tune with the times or the commercial bravery of Brian Brolly, the head of MCA in the UK, in financing the recording.
Apart from this, not a lot was happening for Mike but Dick Leahy, the UK head of Bell Records – a recently formed subsidiary of Bell Records in the USA – was well aware of Mike’s talent. Dick, unquestionably one of the best ‘record men’ of his era, had just had a successful spell as A&R manager of Philips Records and was keen to sign UK artists, including Tony Macaulay. I was by now establishing myself in my career as a manager and both Tony and Mike were clients of mine. There was a deal to be done.
Dick was obliged to go to his New York-based boss Larry Uttal, who had started the company, to do any significant deal. By now, ‘significant deal’ was my middle name. I negotiated a terrific three-year deal to finance recordings produced by Mike and Tony. Dick Leahy at Bell UK, later my partner in GTO Records, would be our point of contact. Mike had committed his exclusive services to me via Gem and he urged me to quit accountancy and devote my time to the company. Altruistically, he knew that I was unhappy with the accountancy side of my work and that I wanted to leave Goodman Myers. Selfishly, he wanted me to have more time to devote to him. Either way it was a meeting that I had with him towards the end of 1969 that made me decide to make the move. He sat in my office, lecturing me to ‘get out from behind that boring desk’ and go and compete with the ‘old farts’ who then dominated the business side of the UK music industry (it was amazing how quickly the years flew and I became an ‘old fart’ myself ).
I went home and told Marsha that because of the deal I had made with Bell Records, I had a unique chance to go fulltime into the business. Beth, our daughter, had been born in 1968 and we now had three young children but I recklessly wanted to give up a financially secure future for a leap into the unknown. Marsha, of course, knew how much I wanted to do this, and she encouraged me to grab the chance. I would never have made that leap without her blessing and encouragement. It was only the first of many occasions in more than fifty years of marriage that Marsha supported me taking business risks. My wife really did help me succeed. She smiled at gigs that she hated and graciously entertained people that she did not necessarily like. When I wanted to monopolise the attention of one or two people at a business dinner, I would identify the possible diversions and ask her to ‘take them out’, which she did without them even being aware of it. Smart and funny, she is an amazing woman, and I am lucky to have found her.
Ellis had given up trying to make me even look like an accountant – I had taken to wearing cowboy hats and boots at the office – and he also supported the idea of me devoting my time to the music business. Happily, for me, and maybe more so for my clients, I quit being an accountant in practice in 1970.
Bearing in mind what Allen Klein had taught me about giving the artist 80 per cent of yours rather than taking 20 per cent of theirs, under the deal that I made with Mike and Tony, Gem Record Productions Ltd would own the records that they produced. They would receive 80 per cent of Gem’s revenue from records that they recorded after deducting payments to the artists.
Gem’s first release was by Edison Lighthouse in January 1970. It was ‘Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)’, written and produced by Tony Macaulay with co-writer Barry Mason. Barry’s then girlfriend Sylvan Whittingham was credited as co-writer, which later became a general issue as to whether helpful comments by a writer’s girlfriend during the writer’s creative process entitled her to be a credited collaborator.
Macaulay’s brilliant production used Tony Burrows as lead voice to make what was a perfect pop record. Burrows was a talented and versatile singer who could sight-read music and he was much in demand as a session singer. The other musicians on the recording were all seasoned session artists. I later managed Tony as a solo artist, but never got him the success his talent deserved. (I met with him in the course of writing this book and he referred to me as his ‘damager’. It was with affection – I hope.)
At that time Tony Macaulay’s girlfriend was Anya Wilson, who was working as an independent record plugger. Tony promised her that if she worked on the record and it became a hit, he would recommend that I took her on as a full-time in-house plugger. With the help of
Anya, the record got immediate airplay and shot into the charts at No. 12 for the weekend of 24 January 1970. Anya met with Mel Cornish, the producer of Top Of The Pops, whose weekly average audience of fifteen million could almost guarantee to make a record a hit. She hoped to persuade Mel to use the record for a routine with Pan’s People, a group of sexy and talented dancers who had a regular spot on the show. To her surprise Mel loved the record and did better, offering to put the band itself on the next TOTP going out in a few days’ time.
This would have been great news had Edison Lighthouse actually existed, but of course Anya could not admit this slight hiccup to Mel. Fortuitously, she bumped into an agent who represented a little-known band called Greenfield Hammer, who immediately agreed to morph into Edison Lighthouse. Macaulay rehearsed them solidly for a day and on 29 January 1970, with Tony Burrows singing lead, they appeared on the show miming to the original track. On that same show Tony also appeared as featured singer with White Plains and Brotherhood of Man. Appearing on the same TOTP in three different bands was a feat achieved by no singer before or since. In the chart for the week following the show, ‘Love Grows’ shot to No. 1. It was the fastest-ever climber to the top spot. It stayed there for five weeks and continued to sell, becoming the ‘summer hit’ for the year.
Gem’s second hit, also produced by Macaulay, was ‘Blame It on the Pony Express’, a song that that he wrote with Roger Greenaway and Roger Cook for Johnny Johnson and His Bandwagon. It got to No. 2 in the charts in January 1970 and established Gem as a serious player in the world of independent production companies.
I was busy with the hits that Tony Macaulay was producing, working with Mike Leander on his projects, whilst still being involved with Mickie Most’s Rak Records, as well as looking after the affairs of my other accountancy clients including the Rolling Stones. My time was clearly stretched. Mickie Most was unhappy that I had left my practice to set up my own production company and he thought that I should give him back the shares that I owned in the Rak group of companies – I had 10 per cent of all his companies in lieu of fees. I hated having to account for the time that I spent on each client’s affairs and this meant I didn’t have to bill him in the same way. I offered to sell Mickie the shares for the recorded time that I had accumulated over the years. It was about five thousand pounds, a small fraction of what the shares were actually worth. He refused to do this for a long time until reorganising his own affairs forced him to do so.
Hunky Dory (Who Knew) Page 13