Hunky Dory (Who Knew)

by Laurence Myers

  Hazel wrote and performed the songs in the film. The soundtrack album went to UK No. 5 and two or three of the singles from the album also charted. It was a good film and I organised a double royal charity premiere on two screens at the Odeon Shaftesbury Avenue. Prince Charles attended one screening and Princess Anne the other. Hazel arrived in a military tank – of course! It was the highest promotional budget I had ever committed to a film, but we promoted its punk aspect and the film failed to attract a wide audience.

  When she came to the film, Hazel was under contract to a small record company called Albion Records. They had one release with her, which did nothing, and she was working as the company’s receptionist to earn some money. Somebody brought her to the attention of film director Brian Gibson when he was about to start on Breaking Glass, financed by Dodi Fayed and produced by Davina Belling and Clive Parsons. The pair had produced Scum, which had been a hit for GTO Films some three years earlier and gave Ray Winstone his big break. Hazel auditioned for Brian, but it was some time before she heard from the producers that she had the part. John Finch was Breaking Glass’s male lead and Jonathan Pryce had a smallish part, as a saxophone player. After the film Hazel would have a long personal relationship with John Finch.

  After her audition, Hazel signed an agreement with Albion as a recording artist and songwriter, for which she was paid forty pounds a week. Albion licensed her services to A&M Records – the successful US company – to make and release the film’s soundtrack, which was produced by Tony Visconti. Although Hazel maintains that she never received any money from Albion for her work on the soundtrack, the film and the successful soundtrack gave her great exposure and she was poised to have a very good career. Hazel was convinced that small-thinking Albion Records were incapable of helping her find her potential. Tony Visconti presumably agreed with her view because he declined to produce her on the Albion label and Albion refused to let her go.

  Eventually, Hazel came to me for help. I met with Albion heads Dai Davies and Derek Savage and tried hard to negotiate a deal under which Albion would have had a significant financial interest in any record deal that I made for Hazel with A&M, who were desperate to sign her. Cutting off their corporate noses to spite their corporate faces, they flatly refused to let her go. I had also introduced her to my old GTO Records partner Dick Leahy, who now had a very successful publishing company in partnership with Bryan Morrison, who published Pink Floyd and other important acts. Morrison Leahy Music would go on to be George Michaels’ publisher and, in 1990, Bryan would become my producing partner in my stage musical Matador. Morrison Leahy offered a very generous deal to buy Hazel’s publishing from Albion, but they too were met with a flat refusal. Eventually Hazel’s contract came to an end, with Albion having earned very little from hanging on to an artist who, with some reason, did not want to be with them.

  Hazel remains a uniquely talented writer/performer. She still has a career, with a devoted fan base called Hazelnuts but, in my opinion, she never fulfilled her potential because of Albion’s intransigence.

  The one good thing that happened with The Springfield Revival was that in 1973 they appeared at the Academy Awards ceremony, having been asked to sing a song that was nominated for an Oscar. We all went along and it was a fabulous night. The song, ‘Come Follow, Follow Me’, was very forgettable as was The Little Ark – the film it came from – but the evening was not forgettable at all and I have a photo of Raquel Welch and me up on my wall to remind me. Impressed? Don’t be. Bob Levinson, our LA publicist, had offered to introduce me to singer Glen Campbell that night and I facetiously said that I would rather meet Raquel Welch. Later in the evening, Bob came and got me from the really unimportant people annex where we were all sat and – with photographer in tow – marched me through to the main room where Raquel Welch was sitting at a table with other luminaries. He shoved me in against the unsuspecting Ms Welch, clicked his fingers for the photographer to take the picture, said, ‘Thank you, Raquel,’ and schlepped me away. The whole thing must have taken less than thirty seconds. Without question, the most embarrassing thirty seconds of my life.

  David closed his St James office and, together with his wife and three children, moved to a very nice home in Beverly Hills that was bought for them by the company. There was a deal to be done with an American record company for the American rights, but this would in no way meet the expenses of a GTO Inc. office in Los Angeles – as part of my renegotiation with Polydor, I had freed The New Seekers’ recording rights for the USA. I suggested that David initially ran our business from his home, but David insisted that we ‘do it right’ and demonstrate to the industry that we were ‘serious players’. He took a suite of prestigious offices in Century Plaza in the heart of Beverly Hills and staffed up, ready to deal with the yet-to-be-discovered stars of tomorrow which he hoped to sign. The company also bought him a Lincoln Continental, which David assured me was the car that ‘serious players’ drove. In fairness to David, whatever my private reservations were, I did not object to him setting up our LA operation as if it were already a huge success. He thought that if you wanted to be a success in LA you had to present yourself as if you already were. Defries thought that if Bowie was to be a star he should live like one. Same principle.

  David was right. I love LA but it is a shallow town where people can, and do, rent a Rolls-Royce for an afternoon so they can arrive at a business meeting in style. Before I bought my own little house in LA I stayed at a bungalow at The Beverly Hills Hotel or the Chateau Marmont and shamelessly rented a Cadillac Eldorado or the like for myself. I kidded myself that I too was obliged to keep up the façade of success, but the real truth was that I just loved briefly living a lifestyle that I could only have dreamed about in my Finsbury Park youth. When I was later in the film business, I sometimes had meetings at the big film studios. I cannot fully explain to you the thrill I got turning up at the Paramount or MGM studios to have the gateman say, ‘Welcome, Mr Myers, you are expected,’ and being directed to park on the lot.

  David moved The New Seekers and The Springfield Revival to LA and provided them with nice living accommodation and weekly living allowances. He staffed up the office, taking Glenn Wheatley, an old Australian associate he had brought to London, over as vice-president. (I have to say that in corporate America, every employee seems to be a vice-president. If a VP is meeting with you, you are supposed to feel that you are important. You soon learn that the VP in charge of internal/external transit is what we would call a doorman. GTO Inc. had a staff of four, two of whom were VPs.)

  Glenn was twenty-three and in Australia he had been a member of a very successful band called The Masters Apprentices and, as is the way with pop stars, he was married to a successful model. Glenn was ambitious and eager to learn and I liked him immensely. He did not get on with David, whom he claimed was unreasonably abusive and aggressive. If so, I certainly never saw this side. At the end of 1974, Glenn went back to Australia. He soon became hugely successful there, managing some of the country’s biggest music stars and owning a major radio station. By 1987, he was included in the Top 200 rich list in Australia’s Business Review Weekly. In 1999, he published his autobiography that was almost embarrassingly fulsome in his praise for me as his guide and mentor. He inscribed the book to me: ‘Without you this would never have happened’. In 2000 I received a call from This Is Your Life in Australia. Glenn was to be the subject, and they wanted to fly me over as the ‘surprise guest’. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of my production of The Seven Year Itch, starring Daryl Hannah, and could not get away.

  In the 2000s Glenn got into trouble with the Australian tax authorities for putting his money in a tax scheme on bad advice. He called me from time to time and I gave him what little advice I could. Unfortunately, as he was a public figure, the Australian revenue decided to make an example of him. He was given a jail sentence and went bankrupt. After he was released from jail he struggled to get back on his feet. He came to London and I loaned
him ten thousand pounds, no paperwork, no payback date, no interest, which he said ‘saved his life’. According to social media Glenn is now extremely successful again, but in spite of my several requests to do so, he has not seen fit to repay the loan. Disappointing.

  Back to LA, where The New Seekers were signed to MGM Records, which was headed up by twenty-seven-year-old Mike Curb – a very right-wing Republican who was active in politics and would later become lieutenant governor of California. He was sometimes known as Mr Clean for his vehement anti-drug stance. Richard Nixon gave Mike Curb the job of coordinating the entertainment for the inauguration of his second term as president in 1973. Glenn was given the job of getting the talent to Washington. Glenn and The New Seekers flew in a jumbo jet of celebrities and retainers including Sammy Davis Jr and Pat Boone. Glenn made sure that everything went to plan on the night. The Nixon administration were famous for their appreciation of services rendered and Spiro Agnew, the vice-president, thanked Glenn and asked if there was anything he might be able to do as a thank-you. Glenn mentioned that he had been trying unsuccessfully for a year to get green cards – American work permits – for himself and his wife. Two weeks later, the cards arrived.

  The other vice-president of GTO Inc. was Eileen Bradley, who had previously worked as a magazine journalist and had a good feel for the teenage market. Many years later I saw Eileen again when she was working as a well-connected agent for magic acts. I had an idea to make a musical based on the life of the famous escapologist Houdini. Magic was all the rage in Las Vegas entertainment and, ever the opportunist, I asked Eileen to fix me up with a meeting with the management of a large hotel and casino to see if they would put it on. The man I saw thought it was a great idea. He asked me what the running time would be and how much the show would cost to mount. As the show had not been written, I did the honest theatre producer thing and made up my answers. An average stage musical lasts around two and a quarter hours and, wishing to sound real, I said ‘Two hours twenty.’

  ‘No good,’ he said. ‘No show in our casino can last more than an hour, it keeps people away from the tables.’

  ‘We can have a one-hour version,’ I hastily replied.

  ‘How much would it cost to put on?’

  In those days, you would aim to budget a West End musical at no more than four million pounds, but knowing that Las Vegas loved things lavish, and not wanting to sound cheap, I said. ‘Ten million dollars.’

  He shook his head. ‘You have to spend at least forty million dollars on a Vegas show,’ and that was the end of that conversation.

  Another ex-GTO Inc employee I met in later life was Billy Sammeth, a very talented man whom David had hired. Bill would later go on to manage Cher and Joan Rivers. Some time in the eighties, I popped in to see Billy at his office when he was managing Cher. He was sitting with his head in his hands. Cher was due to open that night in Vegas – a very big deal – but was two pounds over her desired weight and refusing to go on. Eventually she relented, but Billy probably lost more than two pounds in weight from aggravation. Billy ended up having lawsuits with both Ms Cher and Ms Rivers. The joys of management.

  David and his team worked hard on improving the awareness of The New Seekers in America. They arranged tours including supporting Liza Minnelli in 1973. They appeared on the Johnny Carson show and also did a three-week stint in Las Vegas, but these activities contributed little to the coffers of GTO Inc. David signed some local acts including Angel, a handsome-looking rock band cast as the goody-goody antithesis of Kiss, just as The Beatles were perceived in relation to the Rolling Stones. They were signed to Mike Curb at MGM, who was keen on having wholesome artists on his label. He had signed The Osmonds to cash in on the success of The Jackson 5 and was generally into what you might call white-bread acts.

  I introduced David to Alan Price, the brilliant keyboard player who was having a good career as a solo artist. I had been an admirer of Alan’s talent from his days with The Animals. In fact, he totally changed my opinion on the musical ability he had, as well as that of many of his contemporaries, when I watched him playing around on the piano between recording at a Mickie Most session. Growing up, I had been a great jazz fan. My idols were musicians like Oscar Peterson and Errol Garner. I really liked the pop records that I heard in the sixties, but I was somewhat patronising about the musicians behind the voices. I always assumed that the players were experienced studio professionals, which, of course, they often were. Alan, who was truly a gifted musician, made me much more respectful of the music-makers of his generation. Because these guys often only needed three or four chords, it did not mean that they were not masters of many more. My humble apologies to all concerned for my unspoken thoughts at the time. When Alan asked me to manage him in 1973 I jumped at the chance. He wanted to break America and I booked him on a short promotional tour. Alan was petrified of flying and he took a strong cocktail of whisky and Valium to get himself on the plane from the UK. The tour ended up at The Troubadour, LA’s most famous small venue. The tour was too short to have any real impact on the American market and, sadly, Alan did not like David’s management style and asked me to release him from his contract, which of course I did.

  David also put together The Sarstedt Brothers. Peter Sarstedt had had huge success in 1968 with ‘Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?’ It reached UK No. 1 and fourteen other countries, but he had had little success since then. His elder brother Rick also topped the UK singles chart under the name of Eden Kane, with ‘Well I Ask You’. The youngest brother, Clive, had made records under the name of Robin Sarstedt but by 1972 none of the siblings had much of a career. Their sister Lorraine worked as David’s personal assistant. David put them in an LA studio and they made Worlds Apart Together. They toured a little in the UK but the album was not a success, and they eventually went their separate business ways.

  Rick (Eden Kane) had married Charlene Groman, a nice Jewish girl from LA. (In certain circles – my mother – the phrase ‘Jewish girls’ is always proceeded by ‘nice’.) After GTO Inc. closed down I kept in touch with Rick and Charlene and in an oblique way Rick was a catalyst that helped me persuade Dick Leahy to sell GTO Records to CBS in 1978. It is quite a nice story, which I will relate when I get on to writing about GTO Records. In researching this book, I discovered that Charlene was a half-sister to the actress Stefanie Powers of Hart To Hart TV fame – also a nice Jewish girl: who knew? Stefanie Powers starred in my West End stage production of the musical Matador in 1991 and I had no idea of the connection.

  In May 1974, The New Seekers no longer wanted to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, and disharmoniously broke up. It was front-page news in the UK, and a great disappointment to their thousands of fans around the world. The most probable reason was that, after years of success, they had no money. The group formally declared that they no longer considered GTO to be their managers. They were signed to us individually and we sued them for breach of contract. Where there’s a hit there’s a writ, and the writs were soon flying back and forth like kids fighting with paper airplanes. They sued us for under-accounting. They employed a top firm of accountants to audit our books, but nothing untoward was found. One of them told me that he thought that I was just smarter than his accountants. A backhanded compliment if ever there was one. The audit did show that, strictly in accordance with the provisions of the management contract, the group’s earnings had been eaten up by their regular cash advances and expenses.

  As a standard management agreement of the time, we took 20 per cent of the gross income, and all of the expenses incurred on their behalf were deducted from the balance. Please note that our own expenses of running our offices substantially reduced our commission. The New Seekers were on wages from the day that David put them together. Unlike so many of their contemporaries, they never had to starve before they had success.

  When a band starts on the road, they are usually happy to travel economy, share rooms and generally live a modest lifestyle. As they bec
ome more successful, understandably, they want to travel in more comfortable style. Now here is the thing. Every manager of a reasonably successful band has the same problem. Having risked a great deal of money in the band’s development, you sometimes get lucky, they have some success and you start to recoup. The band become stars and want to live like stars. If the manager is responsible, he warns them gently, and then not so gently, that they should be aware of their financial position. But, people – some sincere, some hangers-on – surround the bands and sow the seeds of discontent. Why, they ask, does the artist not have big cars/houses/drug supplies, whatever? Often a wannabe manager adds fuel to the flames.

  I present you with the manager’s classic dilemma. If you responsibly restrict your artists’ spending, eventually they feel aggrieved and want to leave you. If you let them spend recklessly, they will end up broke. You may recall that Bowie fell out with Tony Defries because he had no idea that he alone was paying for the lifestyle that Tony encouraged him to adopt. Elton John eventually had a falling-out with his long-term manager, John Reid, as did Bob Dylan with Albert Grossman. It is easier to make a list of the artist/manager relationships that did not end in financial acrimony. Peter Grant and Led Zeppelin, Jim Beach and Queen, and Bill Curbishley and The Who quickly come to mind. The Beatles were loyal to Brian Epstein until the day he died, even though he had made terrible deals for them.

  So, faced with the dilemma, what would you do? Would you do the ‘right thing’: protect the artist from himself and take the chance that he would leave you? I don’t think so. Like me and most other managers I knew, after your due warnings had been ignored, you would pragmatically keep your artists happy and your own family secure, by letting the artists indulge in the lifestyle they wanted. Of course, if the artist is hugely successful for years they get rich in spite of themselves or their cynical management. Elton John is richer than his ex-manager. He’s quite probably richer than you and he is certainly richer than me.