Hunky Dory (Who Knew)

by Laurence Myers

  Around April 1972, Mike booked in at Mayfair Sound to work with David Essex, who unavoidably cancelled at the last moment. Rather than waste the studio time, Mike went to the studio to continue to work on the track that he had been sweating over for the past few weeks. He took a singer called Paul Raven that he occasionally used for demos to put a voice on the track. When he had completed his mix, Mike came into my office and said, ‘Now I have something that I want you to hear.’ The track featured Paul’s voice, which was not great, but the record was not about his voice. It was Mike mixing it onto the track that he had taken hours and hours to perfect.

  Rather than waste time and money recording a B-side, Mike played me a remixed version of the same track with the drum sound brought up and instrumental apart from the chorus, bringing up the guitar for the basic melody. We decided that it would make an interesting – and cheap – B-side. Logically the A-side was called ‘Rock And Roll Pt. 1’, and the B-side was ‘Rock And Roll Pt. 2’.

  Singer Paul was not physically pop star material. He was nearly thirty, a little overweight and balding. We discussed the advisability of finding a younger singer with a more appealing natural look to re-voice the track for release. Mike told me that he would give Paul a writer’s credit to soften the blow of not being on the released version. In the event, Mike – a kind man – decided that it would be too cruel to Paul to replace him. Paul had been working as a singer for fifteen years without success and it would have been a big blow. This is the story of the record that morphed Paul Raven – born Paul Gadd – into Gary Glitter.

  Almost twenty years later, Glitter was charged with child pornography. He rightly became persona non grata to the rest of the world, as he is to me and this book. Glitter cruelly damaged the lives of his victims. He also damaged the financial position of many of his professional associates. With records produced by Mike, his backing musicians had carved out a good career of their own as The Glitter Band and that was halted overnight. Sadly, Mike Leander died in 1996 and Glitter’s criminal conviction cut off the flow of royalties to the Leander estate.

  The success of ‘Rock And Roll Pt. 2’ in America in a way lead to the creation of GTO Records. The record went to US No. 7 and Dick Leahy at Bell Records UK urged his boss Larry Uttal, head of the American Bell Records, to quickly take Gary over to the States to promote it. If he had done so, there was every chance that the record could have been an US No. 1 and paved the way for Glitter to have the string of hits there that he had in most other countries of the world. The problem was that Larry had sold Bell to Columbia Pictures three years earlier. He had taken Columbia shares for the sale and the quoted price of Columbia shares had now dropped by about 75 per cent. Larry had a three-year contract to run Bell and was insisting that Columbia made good his loss before signing a new contract. In the meantime, he was purposefully doing nothing to help the company

  Larry Uttal was not a particularly likeable man and had overplayed his hand with his bosses. Instead of giving him the deal that he demanded, they let him go and appointed Clive Davis, one of the best men in the record business, to take over as the new head of Bell. Clive Davis had been the uber-successful head of CBS Records in New York, having signed a string of major artists to that company, including Bruce Springsteen, Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel, Chicago and Aerosmith. Clive had been fired by CBS in July 1973, ostensibly for charging the cost of his son’s bar mitzvah to the company. This is a ridiculous offence, and something that Clive denies to this day. Even if it were true, Clive was making millions for the company, signing big-selling, prestige artists, and sacking him for charging fifteen thousand dollars of personal expenses made no business sense. To his immediate bosses, this would have been like you or I using the company phone for personal calls.

  The truth was that CBS Records was owned by the company that owned CBS News, a station that was constantly critical of President Richard Nixon. Tricky Dicky, as he was rightly known, was determined to have CBS reigned in. He seized on the fact that CBS Records’ black music arm might be using drugs as payola, something that was common to most record companies. The CBS corporate board – concerned that they might lose their broadcasting licence – did what they considered to be the right thing by immediately firing the head of their record company. Using the excuse of his financial malfeasance, Clive Davis was actually marched out of his office by security guards. The whole record industry was aware that his vilification was a farce, and he was soon appointed as a consultant to Columbia Pictures, a company that at that time was not associated with CBS. Clive was the hottest record executive in the world and it was quite likely that Columbia manipulated the situation to get Larry out and Clive in.

  The changes at the top of Bell made Dick Leahy reconsider his own position and I seized the opportunity to offer him a 50 per cent partnership in the new GTO Records. I had been most impressed with him. Apart from the product I supplied, and Bell’s US acts, he had signed a number of good UK-based artists, most notably the hugely successful Bay City Rollers. He was passionate about records, understood the business inside out, had ‘great ears’ – industry shorthand for an ability to pick hits – and most importantly he had great rapport with artists. I had been flirting with him for a while about him someday joining me in starting a GTO Records division.

  I told Dick that I would make a deal with a major record label to finance the company but he would have complete autonomy in the choice of artists and running of the business. This had obvious appeal to Dick, but by the same token if he chose to leave Bell, he could have walked into almost any job in the UK record business. He was a cautious man and he wanted time to consider his options. Clive Davis had asked him to fly to New York to discuss his staying on with Bell, and I wanted to see Clive to discuss the missed opportunity of bringing Gary Glitter to America.

  We flew over to New York together to meet with Clive. He is a remarkable man, a couple of years older than me, and even today when most of our contemporaries are long retired from the music business or in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame in the sky, he is still an active force to be reckoned with. I understood Dick well enough to not bring up his joining me, leaving him deep in thought as to what his next career move should be. Privately, I thought that he would stay with Bell. Clive Davis was a music executive legend. He loved his artists, and fought for them, as did Dick. There was no question that as soon as Clive got behind the desk, the calibre of artists that Dick would be looking after in the UK would be among the highest in the world.

  The meeting that we all had was one that I particularly remember. Backed up by Dick, I complained about the fact that Bell had blown Gary Glitter’s chance of making an impact in America by refusing to bring him over. Clive had signed major international artists to CBS and he was totally disinterested in what he considered to be a one-hit disco dance record performed by a strange-looking man dressed in tinfoil and a dodgy wig. He was dismissive to the point of rudeness, as he focused his attention on trying to persuade Dick to stay. Clive’s ego was apparent as he explained that he was changing the company’s name to Arista and would have unlimited backing to sign any artist that he wanted. He saw Dick as being a vital part of his plans to make sure that his artists were properly looked after in the UK, as well as relying on Dick to raise the standard of artists that were signed in the UK office. I felt sure that Dick would say yes to what was obviously a great opportunity. I said nothing during Clive’s proposition, which was just as well because he talked to Dick as if I were not there. I was not offended. Indeed, if anything, I admired Clive’s line of seduction, clearly perfected by his pitch to artists, and I took mental notes. The meeting lasted a long time. I was convinced that Dick would stay with Clive and – thinking of the pastrami sandwich I could get at the Stage Deli across 6th Avenue – I was near to excusing myself.

  Clive finally sat back, a smug look on his face, and asked Dick, ‘So what do you think?’

  To my amazement, Dick pointed his thumb in my direction and sai
d, ‘Thanks for the offer, but I think I’ll start a record company with him.’ The look on Clive Davis’s face was priceless. I said a cheery goodbye to the dumbstruck Clive and we left.

  Clive, however, managed to do quite well without Dick, signing Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Hall & Oates, Barry Manilow and many other big stars to the Arista label. Later when I asked Dick why he had turned Clive down, he said, ‘He was dismissive of our artist, he was rude to you, and he fancies himself a bit too much.’ So GTO Records was born. Under Dick’s guidance it would be an important player in the UK business, and it deserves, and will later get, a chapter on its own.

  Some time in 1977 Nicky Chinn came to see me about managing The Sweet. Nicky wrote the band’s hit songs with Mike Chapman. They were also managing the band but finding it difficult to do so, possibly because of lead singer Brian Connolly’s severe drink problem. Nicky was an interesting man. He came from a family that was successful in business and I felt that he did not have the pride that he should have in his own achievements. Although his songs sold millions of copies, he seemed somewhat embarrassed by their bubblegum nature. I assured him that he should not have been as he was responsible for some of the greatest glam-rock hits of the era, like ‘Blockbuster’.

  The Sweet were a great example of how a record can be a huge hit with a song that does not stand up on its own. There are very few, if any, cover versions of The Sweet’s ‘Blockbuster’, which was a huge No. 1 record when it was released in 1973. The same anomaly applies to voices. Nobody would deny the value of Jagger’s voice to Stones records, but neither would you hear a good song and say, ‘I’d like to hear Mick Jagger singing that.’

  It was not difficult to put together an extensive tour for The Sweet. I took James, my then seven-year-old son, to see them and naturally went backstage to meet the band. As we went into the dressing room, there was such a groupie fest going on, I had to spin him round and take him out.

  I was also asked by Maurice Oberstein head of CBS Records, to manage Sailor. The band had had a couple of hits with ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ and ‘A Glass of Champagne’. ‘Girls …’ was particularly successful, knocking ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ from No. 1 in 1976. I had met the group’s leader Georg Kajanus and guitarist Phil Pickett some years earlier when I had signed them to Gem as Kajanus Pickett without getting them any success. Georg was a difficult man. CBS had brought over ex-Beach Boy Bruce Johnston to produce a new album, and early on in the recording process Bruce told me that he was giving up as he was ‘too old and too rich to put up with Georg’s shit.’ Phil Pickett went on to write and work with Boy George, co-writing ‘Karma Chameleon’, one of the best-selling singles of all time worldwide. I still see Phil from time to time. Nice man.

  30. GTO RECORDS – DICK LEAHY, DONNA SUMMER, BILLY OCEAN, HEATWAVE

  Dick Leahy was born a year after me and was raised in Dagenham, east London – very much the town of the Ford motor company. Most of his family worked for Ford and it was expected that Dick would do the same. However, he had no wish to follow the family path. Passionate about pop music, he got a job in the A&R department of Philips Records. Dick soon established himself as having ‘ears’. He was poached by Larry Uttall, who was setting up a UK office for Bell, and part of Dick’s job was to look after my Gem output.

  Dick was good at his job and extremely well respected within the industry. I soon had it in the back of my mind that, should I ever want to start a record company, I would want Dick to head it up. I casually planted this idea in Dick’s mind when it was obvious to me that Larry Uttal was having trouble with Columbia, his parent company in New York. Dick did not react to my suggestion. He was a very contained man other than when he was talking about music, and I was content to let the thought of running a GTO record company stay with him.

  I have already told you how Dick spontaneously accepted my job offer during a meeting with Clive Davis, when he turned down a very attractive job. I was aware that once it was known that Dick was leaving Bell, he would have many offers to join other companies and I had to move quickly to get him to come and join me before he changed his mind. I offered him a 50/50 deal with the promise of great autonomy. For the first time in his business life he would, to all intents and purposes, be his own boss. Dick was very happy with this proposal, but I knew I had to get the deal signed before he was seduced away by offers from the major record companies.

  I used my frequent practice for getting deals concluded: get the principal and their lawyers in a room together with a secretary and have no one leave the room until the deal was agreed and signed. In this case – to make the process more seductive – I took Dick, his lawyer Tony Russell, my lawyer Martin Walford and my secretary Pat Grace to the south of France. I kept a twenty-two-foot motorboat in Cannes called Ziggy Stardust, courtesy of Mr Bowie. I anchored Ziggy in a very pleasant bay, and the five of us plus Pat’s typewriter sat on the boat, enjoying the Mediterranean sunshine and some nice white wine from a chiller bag until we agreed the partnership deal and signed off the contracts. It was a happy negotiation and would prove to be a happy deal.

  There was no problem in finding a major record company to finance the operation. Dick was highly rated and I had established myself as someone to do business with because of my success with Bowie, Glitter, The New Seekers and the other hits that had emanated from Gem/GTO productions. Although we were yet to sign an artist, there was competition amongst the major record companies to secure our product. Eventually we settled on Polydor Records, who financed the company through advances against royalties that we would earn from future product. We gave Polydor the rights to distribute our product throughout the world, excluding America, where their operation was not particularly successful. We decided that instead we would licence our product on an artist-by-artist basis in the US.

  Although Dick was happy to be in business with me, he was very keen not to be seen as an employee running my record label. With my support, he took offices in Mayfair and had a distinctive logo designed for GTO Records. He put together a great staff, many of whom went on to have brilliant careers in the music industry after GTO was sold to CBS Records: Di Graham, my ex-secretary, ran the international division. She went on to become a top executive at CBS in Paris and then head of BMG International and eventually head of Arista Records. Paul Kinder – who was my office boy – asked if he could also move over to work for Dick. I happily approved and Paul became head of A&R. He went on to have a successful career with Virgin Records. The head of regional promotion was Edward Christie, who had started working for me as a chauffeur, then moved on to my film division to be in charge of print movement. But music was Edward’s first love and I persuaded Dick to take him on.

  GTO Records were in business before the EU and it was not unusual to own rights only for the UK. We were offered distribution for many artists owned by American record companies, most notably Donna Summer, the most successful artist that we licensed. When ‘Love To Love You Baby’ was a hit, we bought Donna a mink coat as a thank-you gift. Donna’s recordings were owned worldwide by Casablanca Records. Casablanca was owned by Neil Bogart and he and I got to know each other quite well. He once told me one of the great stories of the music business: when he started Casablanca, he had no success for a long time. He had put all of his money into the band Kiss and nobody was buying their first album. He was so low that he went to the beach and walked into the sea with stones in his pocket with the intention of ending his life. He told me that he stood in the sea for hours then said to himself ‘Fuck it.’ He went back to his office and rented a Rolls-Royce to cheer himself up. A few weeks later Kiss suddenly took off big time, and Neil was in business. Casablanca then went on to become one of the most successful disco record companies of the time, signing the Village People as well as Donna Summer.

  I almost took Neil Bogart into the film business. I had acquired the rights to make Elton John and Bernie Taupins’s ‘Benny and The Jets’ into a film and Neil was going to finance it. As wit
h most film projects, it did not happen – but that didn’t stop us having a great time talking about setting the story on LA’s Venice Beach where roller disco was the craze of the month. I tried it myself but my portly five-feet seven-inches did not feel comfortable amongst the tall, slim, blonde Californians. Tragically Neil died of cancer at the age of thirty-nine and he was much mourned by all who had known him.

  GTO’s first hit in 1976 was ‘Only You Can’ by Fox. The band’s lead vocalist – British-Australian Noosha Fox – went on to make a cameo appearance in Side By Side, a film I produced which was directed by Bruce Beresford. It was his first film outside of his native Australia. Bruce went on to be an A-list Hollywood film director and never mentions Side By Side in his credits. I can understand why … it was a rubbish film!

  GTO Records’ most successful homegrown artists were Billy Ocean and Heatwave, both major artists in the seventies. Billy Ocean, who is still going strong, was a great coup for the label. He is the biggest-selling UK black solo artist. A great singer, and a lovely man, Billy was managed by Laurie Jay. In the 1980s when I was not doing well, I almost went into the management business with Laurie. He had lost Billy as a client but he had a nose for talent and there were a couple of his acts that I thought showed great promise. Unfortunately, Laurie was far too cavalier in his business dealings, which is probably why Billy left him, and I did not pursue a relationship. Laurie died in 2017 and I have been told that in recent years when he was struggling financially, Billy helped him out.