Hunky Dory (Who Knew)

by Laurence Myers

  We learned that the Germans, for instance, liked trumpet and saxophone records. There was a little-known American saxophone player called Billy Vaughn. I put together an album of familiar old songs like ‘Sail Along Silv’ry Moon’, ‘Lili Marleen’ and ‘La Paloma’ and it sold around half a million copies. An album of Nini Rosso, a trumpet player, featured a similarly unfashionable repertoire and almost was as great a success. One of our biggest-selling artists was the dolorously voiced Jim Reeves, an album that I could never listen to past the first track without falling asleep.

  What kept the majors from entering the TV-selling market for a long time was their need for a business plan, especially in Germany, before they risked investment. What they did not know was that K-Tel and Arcade never had a business plan. We both operated with the market grafter’s mentality that we all grew up with. Those of you who read my early history may remember that I worked in the market for about five years while I was a poorly paid accountancy articled clerk.

  When an album was launched, Arcade had to commit to buying TV time and also make sure that we had reserved pressing capacity to meet the hoped-for demand. We would put an album out and if it was not working, Michael Levene would cancel the TV time and the pressing orders and worry later about the flack that inevitably came his way. There was a lot of schmoozing and many generous Christmas presents. We were very much a seat-of-the-pants operation, and the majors could not operate that way.

  The biggest seller we ever had in the UK was Elvis – 40 Greatest Hits. The tracks that I licensed from RCA were pretty much already available on Camden, their low-volume budget line. Once again my inside knowledge of the business was the key. I knew that RCA had recently bought out all of Elvis’s future royalties for a huge sum of money and I convinced them that this was a way of quickly getting some back. I agreed an advance of just sixty thousand pounds, but eventually the record was so successful, Arcade paid them several hundred thousand pounds. We sold over two million copies, and at that time it was one of the highest-ever selling albums in the UK. As was normal, we had a three-year deal with RCA to exploit the rights. Elvis died in August 1977, two weeks after our deal ended. Had we still had the rights, we could have sold another million. In 1978, RCA put out a pink vinyl version of the same compilation, with a different cover but the same name.

  There is a kicker to the Elvis – 40 Greatest Hits story. I had become close to RCA executive Mel Ilberman, who was then Colonel Parker’s contact man at the company. Arcade Records had a gold disc made for Elvis that I took to Mel in New York, in the hope that he would pass it on to The King. He had a better idea. ‘I’m flying to LA tomorrow to make a courtesy call on the Colonel. Why don’t you come with me? You’ll be doing me a favour, I really have nothing to talk to him about.’ An offer I could not refuse.

  I called my friend Freddy Bienstock, a partner in Elvis’s publishing company, who promised to ask the Colonel if there was a chance of presenting the disc to Elvis in person. That evening Freddy told me that the Colonel’s office was on the MGM Studios lot and Elvis would be there for costume fittings for his next (awful) movie. The Colonel was going to ask him to stop by. I was more excited than a sophisticated music executive should be – meeting Elvis was something that was as close to meeting a deity as this agnostic Jew was ever going to get. But the Colonel the next day gave the devastating news that Elvis’s costume-fitting had been cancelled so he wasn’t coming in. I was obviously disappointed, and as I recall so was Mel. I was about to leave them to their business but Mel asked me to stay. He was right – they really had nothing to talk about. Mel went through the release schedule for the next album, the Colonel whinged about RCA’s slow accounting and that was it. Mel, no doubt eager to get away, excused himself but suggested that I stay for a few minutes and chat to the Colonel about the success of the Arcade release.

  I had earned a living working as a market grafter. Colonel had at some point pre-Elvis also worked as a market grafter at county fairs where punters paid to watch his ‘dancing chickens’. The chickens were placed on a heated plate and danced, as one would. The Colonel saw the two of us as kindred spirits and I was with him for a fascinating two hours. He ran the merchandising wherever Elvis appeared, and always stayed by the sales booth taking the cash. One wonders if he accounted for this to Elvis as part of their 50/50 agreement. One suspects not. He kept a stock of all of the merchandise in his office and gave me a range of samples as a going-home present. The gifts would not have been of interest to my young kids, so rather than carry them home, I gave them to the maid at my hotel. Who knew? I do know that Elvis got the gold disc. Very recently a friend of mine visited Graceland and sent me a photo of the Arcade gold disc on a wall, with hundreds of others that had been presented to Elvis over the years.

  In 1982, a fourteen-page supplement in Billboard, the most important international music trade magazine, celebrated ten years of Arcade success. They reported that Arcade’s turnover in 1981 was fifty million dollars. I cannot remember if that was true or something I made up to impress the industry. Probably the latter.

  The major record companies, helped by ex-Arcade employees, eventually realised that there was no real mystery to our operation, and that they were mad to supply Arcade or K-Tel with product. They gradually went into TV marketing their own catalogues. Arcade got the dregs and began to lose money on some of our releases. It was obvious that our days in the record business were numbered. In 1983, Richard Branson – a smart man if ever there was one – made a deal with EMI to start releasing compilation albums for UK majors. Now That’s What I Call Music! is, at the time of writing, up to Now! No. 96. Arcade, wisely, had already given up the UK market, by the time Now! arrived, and the series rang the death knell for K-Tel and Ronco.

  We initiated the Billboard magazine supplement partly to promote the fact that I had taken Arcade Germany into the video business. In 1980, home VCR was exploding, and shops were opening all over the country to meet the public’s demand for films to be played at home. The problem was that the major film companies were not yet making their product available. They had not worked out if the market was to be in rental or sales, if their rights even provided for home use, what the division of income between the various stakeholders in a film in this new media would be, etc. I realised that the shops had to fill their shelves with films. By now I was in the film world and I was able to source titles not owned by the majors, which the shops grabbed even though the content was generally awful. Inevitably, as with the record business, the majors soon worked out their problems, made their films available to the video market and that was the end of Arcade Video.

  Arcade itself folded in 1983 and Herman Heinsbroek, the bright man I had poached from CBS Holland to run our Dutch company, took over the valueless company and re-launched the brand into the mainstream music business with great success.

  In 1991, Michael Levene and I had another shot at working on a record together. Larry Levene had gone into the property business and Michael had a successful online sales company called Best Direct. As the name implies, products were not available in stores and customers bought directly in response to clever TV commercials and infomercials. You will remember them well. In fact, as a genre, they are still going. These ads had a key moment, the CTA – Call To Action – triggering the punter, sorry, the customer to, ‘Order now and be sent absolutely free a … ’

  Michael was nostalgic for the happy days in the record business and both of us were nostalgic for the money that we earned from Arcade Records, so he asked me if I could think of a record package that he could sell. Not an easy task, as by then the majors had ceased to license any of their catalogues to outsiders. But the radio station Classic FM had started in 1992 and was proving a great success broadcasting best-known melodies from classical music. Clearly there was a market for popular classics, which we could combine with the public’s desire for ‘collectables’. I decided to put together a ten-CD set of the most well-known composers, knowing tha
t there would be a wide choice of snatches of instantly recognisable melodies that could be used to make a great TV commercial. The package would have to be good value, which was not a problem. The actual cost of manufacturing each CD was less than fifty pence. The value to the consumer was what was on it, so the challenge was to pay as little as possible for the content.

  Decca Records had by far the best roster of classical artists, but I realised that they would be expensive to deal with and, quite rightly, very fussy about the quality of the recordings. By now, I was completely indoctrinated by the Michael Levene mantra of ‘They’re for selling not for using’, so I bought the content from Henry Hadaway, who owned a huge catalogue of schlock recordings by well-known names – or at least featuring artists whose names were to become well-known even if they weren’t at the time of the recording. Henry’s ‘Frank Sinatra records’ were by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in the forties when Sinatra was the unaccredited singer with the band. Their Beatles recordings were when they were the backing band for Tony Sheridan. If Henry could have found a recording where Chuck Berry had clapped along, it would have been sold as a Chuck Berry record. You get the picture. Most of his product was retailed through garage forecourts and other retailers who sold purely on price.

  For very little money, I bought the best-known recordings of the ten most popular classical composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, etc. The recordings were by such ‘quality’ names as the Bratislava Radio Orchestra or the equivalent of the Huddersfield Philharmonic, if there had been one. They made up ten CDs which could be sold on TV for a very large margin of profit. I had to come up with the additional ‘absolutely free’, something as an incentive to order. Now!’s classical music had been given a boost when the legendary trio of Pavarotti, Carreras and Domingo appeared on worldwide television in a concert broadcast at the time of the 1990 World Cup. The Three Tenors’ recording of the evening had sold in its millions. Obviously a CD of the three tenors would be an amazing incentive to ‘Call and order NOW’. Back to Henry Hadaway.

  Sure enough, Henry sourced recordings by each of the three famous tenors. They were not singing together as they did on the famous World Cup concert and the quality of the recordings was awful, but it was for selling, not for using. Some had been pirated from radio broadcasts, some recorded illegally from live concerts. You could actually hear an audience member coughing on one of the recordings. But I had a CD that could legally be called ‘The Three Tenors’. Am I proud of creating this really inferior compilation? Absolutely not. But in 1992 my glory days in the music business were long behind me and my income from my old catalogue was diminishing. Luciano, Placido and Jose, or ‘the boys’, as I like to call them, saved my financial arse.

  Michael made a great TV commercial, the collection was an enormous success and I did very well out of it indeed. There were very few complaints about the quality of the recordings. I believe that most consumers bought it with the coffee-table book mentality, that it was for displaying rather than for listening.

  Michael Levene died in 2009 after a very long and debilitating illness. I had known him since he was ten years old and he was best man at my wedding to Marsha. He was not only my brother-in-law and a good business partner, he was also my friend and I still mourn his loss.

  The power of TV is now even greater than it was during my days with Arcade. Radio play used to make instant record stars. Now it is reality TV that spews out telegenic chart toppers. But the choreographed manipulation of audience reaction bothers me. Voting for the back-story as much as the talent. The boom-boom-boom-boom heartbeat before the tearful winner inevitably declares, ‘It’s like a dream come true,’ and the losers glottal-stop, ‘I’m guh-ed.’ I have a horror that one day the election of a new Pope will not be announced by white smoke coming from the Sistine chapel. Instead the eligible cardinals will be lined up on that famous balcony overlooking St Peter’s Square. There will be the boom-boom-boom-boom heartbeat before His Holiness, newly elected by viewers’ telephone votes, is announced to the world by a deep, echoing voice from the sky.

  Why am I so incensed by reality TV? To be honest, partly it is because starting a pop music talent show was an obvious opportunity, open for all. Like many of my contemporaries, I am consumed with envy/rage/bitterness that I did not think of doing it myself.

  29. MIKE LEANDER – ROCK AND ROLL PT. 2

  Mike Leander’s musical talent really bloomed in the sixties. He helped Keith Richards with the arrangement for the 1964 record of ‘As Tears Go By’, the song written for Marianne Faithfull by Keith and Mick Jagger. He also did the string arrangement for The Beatles’ ‘She’s Leaving Home’.

  Marianne made ten singles for Decca Records between 1964 and 1969. The producers included Andrew Loog Oldham, Tony Calder and Mike Leander. Mike worked on the tracks variously as studio engineer, arranger and orchestra director. Some records were released under the name Marianne Faithful with The Mike Leander Orchestra. RCA released ‘Migration’, a highly acclaimed orchestral record by The Mike Leander Orchestra. Decca released a single by The Mike Leander Orchestra of ‘The Letter’/‘Hey Jude’, all now collectors’ items. By the time Mike started working with me at Gem, Marianne was at the height of her dance with heroin. She was literally living on the streets, but Mike thought she might still have some of her early magic. He brought her to see me and I agreed to take her on as a Gem artist. She had no home, no possessions and no hope. We found her somewhere to live, paid the rent and gave her some money to buy food. From my point of view, this signing was as much an act of charity as a commercial decision.

  Unsurprisingly, the Marianne Faithfull sessions did not work. Mike found it difficult to get a decent performance out of her. She often did not turn up to the studios, where we had expensive studio time, technicians and musicians booked and waiting. Mike brought her to see me in the office. Pasty-faced and sweating, she promised that, if I gave her another chance, she would turn up to the studio straight. She did not keep her promise and it was all very sad.

  One night, Marsha and I were sitting at a table at Tramp, a fashionable disco of its time. Marianne made an entrance into the club, escorted by Richard Cole, Led Zeppelin manager Peter Grant’s archetypal rock-soldier roadie. I knew him from my past involvement with Peter and the band. Marianne, who looked like an emaciated black-and-white sketch of herself, acknowledged me with a perfunctory nod and sat at a table across the room. A while later, Richard came over and requested that I send a bottle of champagne to ‘my artist’s table’. I knew that ‘my artist’ had a recording session scheduled with Mike the next day and I declined to buy the champagne. My counter-offer to arrange for a car to take Marianne home at a reasonable hour was rejected and, quelle surprise, she did not turn up at the studio the next day.

  Drug addiction is of course a terrible disease, and I have real sympathy for those it afflicts, and even more sympathy for the family and friends who have to look on. But, on a business level, it is really difficult to deal with an addict whose behaviour wreaks havoc with other people’s careers. Alcohol, of course, can be just as destructive. Mike did manage to finish an album with Marianne called Masque, but I did not think that it was good enough to deliver to Bell Records for release. Years later, I licensed the album to a budget label, who retitled it Rich Kid Blues. I will never recoup my costs, which does not concern me, but it would have been nice if my altruism had helped Marianne with her drug issues. Sadly, it did not. There was an attempted suicide in New York in the eighties, before Marianne got herself into rehab and bravely straightened herself out. Since then, to her great credit, she has managed to survive not only being Mick Jagger’s ex, but also all the drugs and her scandals du jour in the sixties, including the alleged novel use of a Mars bar. In her teens, she was the pulchritudinous fantasy behind many a young man’s locked bedroom door. If you want to know why, look up clips of The Girl on a Motorcycle on YouTube. Marianne is now taken seriously as a singer and has celebrated her fiftieth annivers
ary in showbiz with a world tour. According to an excellent BBC documentary about her, broadcast in February 2019, she is enjoying her current musical success and her family life with her son and grandchildren. Good for her. In the documentary she also acknowledged her debt to Mike Leander and Gem for getting her off the streets in 1970. So, I suppose, good for us.

  At this time, Mike would book studio time to work with no particular purpose other than to experiment with sound, with the help of studio engineer John Hudson. It was to encourage creativity like this that I had started Gem/GTO. Very few record companies would allow their signings to just fool around in a studio without knowing why they wanted the time and without budgetary restrictions. I was content that neither Mike nor Tony Macaulay would waste my money to no purpose, and they were never obliged to seek my ‘permission’ to book a studio.

  Mike was a multi-instrumentalist who could play drums, guitar, bass and piano. I once popped into Mayfair Sound where Mike, alone in the studio, was recording and found that he had placed wet towels on the drum skins in an attempt to get a sound that was in his head but that he was struggling to reproduce in the studio. He had looped his drum sound time and time again and he and John Hudson were experimenting with moving the mic around and using the technical effects that the studio’s recording desk had to offer. Mike had also multi-tracked some guitar riffs using a technique that I had seen him practising in his office. When alone, Mike – a brilliant musician who was not a great guitarist – sat there for hours experimenting with retuning a guitar to enable him to play chords by using his cigarette lighter like a steel guitar slide. We had a running joke of me popping my head round his door almost daily, saying, ‘Anything that you want me to hear?’ and Mike replying, ‘Not yet, old bean.’ For that studio session, he had also had in musicians John Rossall and Harvey Ellison to lay the down the horn sound. I was yet to hear the melody to go over it, but the drum sound went through my body as if the bass drum were inside my head. It was an unbelievably exciting track.