Hunky Dory (Who Knew)

by Laurence Myers

  Even though there were things about Tony Defries’ conduct that had upset me, I had maintained a cordial relationship. I knew Michael Lippman, David’s new attorney/manager, so I was in a unique position to calm things down. I told Mel that if RCA would host a ‘peace conference’, I would do my best to get the warring parties together. Negotiations followed that made organising a Middle East summit look like a doddle, but eventually RCA took a huge suite at The Century Plaza hotel in Los Angeles. The Defries camp had a room, the David camp had a room, and RCA and I had a room, the neutral ground, where we met. It had a living area that looked like a forerunner of an IKEA showroom. The two warring parties sat on sofas at either end of the room, which could easily have accommodated five-a-side football. If I’d have had a whistle I would have blown it to start the game.

  The essence of my referee’s instructions was something like this: ‘If you carry on fighting you are going to make some lawyers a lot richer and yourselves a lot poorer. You two have made me a lot of money and it concerns me that you are both wasting time, money and energy fucking up David’s career. I have no financial interest in the outcome of this meeting. Both of you have to be prepared to give a little and both of you have to want to resolve the issues. I do not wish to act as any sort of mediator and will not be present during your discussions.’

  They agreed to talk and I went and hid in the RCA room with Mel Ilberman. After a long time Michael Lippman came in to see me, looking a little shamefaced. ‘I am very embarrassed but David insists that I ask you to sign a piece of paper confirming that you have no financial interest in Defries’ affairs any more.’

  I was furious, and replied, ‘Tell David to go fuck himself.’

  I am pretty sure that Michael did not pass on my specific choice of language, as on the few occasions I subsequently ran into David he was his usual polite self. But as Oscar Wilde once famously said, ‘No good deed goes unpunished’ and in later years when I wanted to get David involved in some theatre projects, my approaches were ignored. Maybe he was told of my suggestion to ‘go fuck himself ’ and was returning the compliment.

  As I recall, the peace and reconciliation meeting came to a premature end when Mel Ilberman received a call to say that Defries’ lawyers had just served another formal notice on RCA, pursuant to his general campaign, that they were not to deal with David’s recordings other than through MainMan. But dialogue had, however, begun between David, via Lippman, and Defries, and eventually a very long and detailed settlement agreement was signed giving MainMan a substantial interest in Bowie’s future earnings and granting them joint ownership of his album masters (full details of the agreement are set out in the Gill-mans’ Alias David Bowie). The agreement was far-reaching and in 1997 – more than twenty years after their split – Defries was still profiting hugely from David’s work.

  It was also in 1997 that the star raised fifty-five million dollars – not a misprint; fifty-five million dollars – by issuing ‘Bowie bonds’. Put simply, these were loan notes paying 7.9 per cent interest, maturing after fifteen years, secured on his future earnings from his albums. As Defries was half-owner of the masters, David would have needed his cooperation and he presumably received half of the full amount raised, to buy out his interest. Under my Gem deal with RCA, the masters were to revert to my company and that benefit I passed on to MainMan for a lousy half a million pounds. Who knew?

  Tony Zanetta told me that the MainMan offices were closed in 1975 and he and many others felt cast adrift. It seemed that he had never had a proper salary working for Tony. He had his rent and credit card paid by Mainman, and was given a few dollars walking-around money. The same had applied to the Spiders’ Mick Ronson, bass guitarist Trevor Bolder and drummer Woody Woodmansey.

  After a hugely successful tour playing sixty-one venues in seven weeks, the final date was at London’s Hammersmith Odeon in July 1973. Just before they finished with ‘Rock’n’Roll Suicide’ in front of a star-studded audience, including Mick and Bianca Jagger, Paul and Linda McCartney, Lou Reed, Keith Moon, Barbra Streisand and me, David made an announcement that shocked the audience. ‘Not only is this the last show of the tour, it is the last show we will ever do.’ The band was over. Woody and Trevor had no idea that they were now out of work. Even Mick Ronson was only told earlier in the day. Like Tony Zanetta in New York, the three Spiders From Mars had never been paid a proper salary. Their expenses were covered generously: Mick was given fifty pounds a week and Trevor and Woody were each given thirty pounds a week. Mike Garson, the American jazz pianist who had been brought in for the tour was paid eight hundred dollars a week, more than the rest of the band put together. After the tour David was taking time off from recording so Mick was also going to be out of work. Defries took Ronson on as a solo artist, but according to Suzanne, Mick’s then wife, they didn’t have any money until Mick produced the Your Arsenal album for Morrissey.

  After the Century Plaza un-peace talks, I next met David at the Cannes Film Festival in 1978. David Hemmings was there with David, promoting Just A Gigolo. Marsha and I had met David and Prue Hemmings in the summer of 1977, through Mike and Penny Leander. This was when we had been due to go and stay with the Leanders in La Barracca, their villa in Majorca. On arrival, they told us that their house was not completed and we were to stay with David and Prue, who had rented a large house not far away. We had met the Hemmings socially a few times, but were hardly proper friends. The Leanders had not told us of this switch in accommodation until we arrived, because obviously we would not have wished to impose ourselves on people that we hardly knew.

  David Hemmings came to prominence as an actor in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, one of the seminal films of the sixties. He went on to make dozens of films before turning to directing. In addition to being a superb actor, he had a great voice and had started his career as a boy soprano working with Benjamin Britten. He starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Jeeves. He was also a gifted artist and a superb raconteur. Most of all he had a huge sense of fun, as indeed did Mike Leander. They were both inclined to drink a lot, which often fuelled their naughtiness. Hemmings, offered a drink, would say, ‘Well, it is a warm day.’

  The Hemmings made us extremely welcome and we had a great time. David played all day but had enough energy to work late into the night. Though around forty and past the youthful beauty of Blow-Up, he was still an extremely handsome and attractive man. I noted that if Marsha needed to get up in the night to go to the lavatory she spent some time fixing her hair and make-up before she ventured out of our room. There must have been something in the Majorcan water because she never got up in the night to pee when we were at home.

  David and I did become friends and we also worked together. In 1981 he directed The Survivor, a film that I had developed based on a book by James Herbert. Hemmings changed the story so much that James Herbert, quite rightly, never forgave me.

  Hemmings and Mike Leander were like brothers. They even looked alike. One evening at Tramp, when Mike was being treated for the cancer that would eventually kill him at the too-young age of fifty-five, he complained that the chemo had made him bald. Hemmings roared with laughter, ‘Your hair will grow back, but these won’t,’ as he took out his false teeth and slapped them on the table. This in a crowded Tramp club was a true measure of friendship. Hemmings also died young, at the age of sixty-two. They had both smoked, drunk and enjoyed life to excess. Personally, I do not believe in heaven or hell but would like to think that Leander and Hemmings are together somewhere, along with Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Harris, Richard Burton and others of that ilk whose way of life we mere mortals condemned but wished we had tasted.

  Just A Gigolo starred Kim Novak and Marlene Dietrich as well as David Bowie. It was made in Berlin and Hemmings invited me to come and see him on set. It was 1978, the Berlin Wall was still up and I jumped at the chance of having a glimpse of life in the besieged Berlin. I flew into Tempelhof airport feeling very ‘spy who came in from the cold’ and w
ent straight to the studio. I had not seen David Bowie for some years and I was intrigued to see how he reacted to me. I was particularly excited at the thought of meeting Marlene Dietrich and Kim Novak, the other stars of the film. I was very disappointed – David was not on set. Marlene Dietrich had never been on set. All her action had been shot in Paris and cut in to her scenes with David.

  David would probably not have taken a part in the film had he not been living in Berlin. He had recorded Heroes there, produced by Tony Visconti, in a studio about five hundred yards from the Berlin Wall. Hemmings confided in me that other than his ‘close relationship’ with Miss Novak, things were not going well. He was over-budget, he was unhappy with the script – there had been four different screenwriters – and it was not a happy set. Bowie was understandably pissed off because one of the main reasons he had said yes to the film was to work with the legendary Dietrich, whom he never even got to meet.

  Anyway, Hemmings took the film to Cannes in 1978 and David was there to promote it. By then I was a regular participant in the festival. Mike and Penny Leander were also there and we all saw a lot of each other. Just a Gigolo was a poor film but Hemming’s optimism was infectious and we all celebrated its upcoming release as if it had Oscar potential.

  There was one memorable night when I took David Bowie and the Leanders to the Whisky À Gogo, Cannes, hip disco. David did not raise his differences with Defries and actually thanked me for his ‘great times’ at Gem. David seemed quite philosophical when I explained that I could not accommodate his request to get ‘my artist’ some cocaine. The Whisky was full of music-business people, and I must confess to enjoying the looks of jealousy/admiration as I sat chatting to one of the great glam-rock pioneers I had helped to fame. David took Penny on the floor for a slow dance, and she was not best pleased that Mike did not appear to be the least bit upset. Hemmings was supposed to join us but had been obliged to spend the evening with potential buyers of his film.

  Just A Gigolo was released to such universally terrible reviews that it was withdrawn from circulation, causing Bowie to later quip: ‘It was my 32 Elvis Presley movies rolled into one.’

  That evening at the Whisky was the last time I spent time with David and I am glad that it is such a pleasant memory.

  26. POSTCRIPT ON DAVID BOWIE AND TONY DEFRIES

  Since I began writing this book, David Bowie has died. I had not seen him for forty years, and it would be hypocritical to say that I was devastated by the news in a personal way, but David had been a big adventure in my business life and I was certainly saddened and shocked by his unexpected death.

  What shocked me even more was the effect that David’s death had on people around the world. The outpouring of grief was extraordinary, and the worldwide media coverage was equal to that following John Lennon’s murder.

  I think that it was not David’s musical ability, special though it was, that had such a profound effect on his fans and followers. In the sixties, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had caught the wave of youth revolution and became the symbols of change from the older generations. David had not caught a wave, he had created one. Through his music, performance and lifestyle, he articulated that people should be what they wanted to be, and that conventions were made to be broken. Though forever a chameleon, he was always quintessentially English and when we were together in private, he never appeared to take himself too seriously. He also wrote songs that were not love songs.

  I have not seen Tony Defries for some thirty-odd years. He is, I believe, a highly intelligent man. In the 1970s, he predicted that every home in the developed world would have a personal computer for general family use, an outrageous idea at the time. Sadly, after I helped him set up MainMan, I only ever heard from him when he needed my help. Around 1978 he called me to ask if I could assist him in getting a record deal for John Mellencamp, an artist whose name, against his wishes, Defries had changed to Johnny Cougar. I was unhappy with the offhand way that he had dealt with me once he had fled the Gem nest, and I did not feel that this was something that I wanted to do. Mr Cougar had little success under Defries’ guidance but subsequently became an important artist when he left Defries and changed his name back to Mellencamp.

  About eight years ago, Defries called me again, out of the blue. He told me that he had become a self-taught scientist and had developed a technique that would revolutionise solar-panel heating. He was urgently looking for substantial monies to develop the project and asked me if I could help him find an investor. Still a respecter of Defries’ intellect, I did not doubt his ability to come up with something brilliant but had no inclination to be involved with him in business again.

  Since the demise of MainMan, as far as I am aware he did not manage any other well-known artists other than those he met during the time he worked with me at Gem and John Cougar Mellencamp,. Maybe he chose not to. According to Wikipedia, Tony Defries lost twenty-two million dollars in an offshore tax-evasion scheme. He was also sued by Capitol Records for copyright infringement – a case that he lost, costing him nine million dollars in damages and costs.

  I do not think that Defries behaved particularly well with me but I do not rejoice in any woes that may have befallen him. He brought David Bowie into my business life and, in the early days, before he began to believe his own publicity, he was fun to work with.

  27. GTO INCLUDING DAVID JOSEPH AND THE NEW SEEKERS

  So, how did I manage to go through the five hundred thousand pounds that I received from the Bowie deal? It is a cautionary tale.

  One of the reasons that I was not unhappy that Defries and his entourage were moving out in the summer of 1972 was that I was actively considering a merger with the Toby Organisation. It was a company started by a young man named David Joseph, who had brilliantly taken three boys and two girls, named them The New Seekers and guided them to major success with ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’. This had become a worldwide hit thanks to a Coca-Cola commercial.

  David was the opposite of Defries. He was conventional, serious, obviously reliable and a proven success as a manager. I was still aware of my own lack of experience of managing a group on the road, getting the right gigs, arranging tours etc, and I was interested in working with him. He, on the other hand, had negotiated a poor record deal with Polydor Records for The New Seekers and I could see that we complemented each other. At the time he was based in St James Street, London, sharing offices with Slim Miller Entertainments, a successful agency who booked the group’s live performances in the UK. David had an interest in Slim’s company but his ambition was not to help grow a company involved in cabaret acts. He wanted to be a player on the international pop music stage.

  David was born in England but his parents soon moved to Australia. He worked in radio and then became a successful TV producer, marrying Robin, an accomplished and well-known Australian jazz singer who then raised their family. They moved to the UK in 1970 and when we met, he and Robin had three daughters and a dog called Toby – hence the name of his company. One of the reasons I had been outside the Bowie/ Defries circle was that I was married with children and in the evenings I wanted to have time to devote to my family while they were happy to spend their leisure time at the somewhat louche Sombrero club. Like myself, David Joseph was a family man. We were not close friends, but we had a lifestyle in common.

  The New Seekers were a five-piece harmony group born out of The Seekers, a hugely successful sixties Australian, folk-influenced act led by the amazing voice of Judith Durham. They had a string of hits including ‘The Carnival is Over’, ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’, and ‘Georgy Girl’. Judith left in 1968 and the group broke up. David had the idea of forming The New Seekers and organised Keith Potger – one of the original Seekers – to front the group and to ‘resign’ once The New Seekers were established. Keith retained a financial interest in David’s business.

  I suggested that David and I merge our two companies on a 50/50 basis. Even though the skills that
David brought to the merger were important, the 50/50 agreement now may seem a poor deal on my part, bearing in mind the subsequent success of Bowie, Gary Glitter, GTO Records and others. HOWEVER – purposely in bold capitals – in July 1972 when I made the deal, David’s New Seekers were a star act who had broken through big time, were touring for good money and generating substantial income. They were bigger stars than David Bowie. They were the UK entry to the European Song Contest (a very big deal at that time). My existing artists – Bowie included – had great potential but were an overall drain on my limited resources. Ziggy had just been released, and whilst we all thought it was rather special, nobody could anticipate the way it would set his career alight. I felt comfortable working with David and felt that acquiring the Toby Organisation was a safety net for GTO.

  The joint company was called Gem Toby Organisation Ltd, which soon became GTO. Keith Potger had a minority share-holding in Toby and was therefore a minority shareholder in the new joint company but, in practice, I was the dominant partner.

  Following the success of The New Seekers, David tried the same formula with The Springfield Revival. The original Spring-fields, featuring Dusty Springfield and her brother Tom, had been a big success in the early sixties. Mike Hurst – one of the original group – fronted the new band to get it going. Dusty of course had gone on to have a brilliant solo career, but The Springfield Revival was not a success, and we lost all of our investment. I did get to keep one of the guitars that we had bought for them, which I call my ‘fifty-thousand-pound guitar’. In the same vein, I still have some very costly mementos bearing the name of my various artists and films that failed at spectacular cost. I have a very expensive paperweight from my Broadway production of End of the Rainbow. It was a play about Judy Garland, which I have since had made into a film starring Renée Zellweger called Judy, so maybe I will get some of the play losses back after all. It is no bad thing to keep reminders of one’s failures, along with the trophies of one’s successes – pride of place in the former category definitely goes to my four-hundred-thousand-pound Breaking Glass T-shirt, from the film starring Hazel O’Connor that sent my film company broke.