Losing My Virginity

by Richard Branson

  I watched Johnny as he sat on the sofa and nodded his head gently to the music. It was difficult to believe that this was the same man, gaunt and thin as a lightning conductor, who had screeched abuse at everyone, spat at pictures of the Queen, and galvanised a generation of anger. Thinking about the Emperor Haile Selassie, who inspired the Rastafarians, I wondered whether the British royal family hadn’t missed a trick.

  Over the course of a week we signed almost twenty reggae bands and found a couple more toasters, called Prince Far I and Tappa Zukie, into the bargain. I tried to persuade Johnny Lydon to stay with The Sex Pistols but to no avail. He told me that the group had fallen out among themselves and with Malcolm McLaren; that Sid Vicious was in a tailspin, taking all kinds of drugs and growing violent with Nancy, his girlfriend. Johnny wanted to go solo, and he had a couple of musicians in mind to form a new band called PiL, Public Image Limited. I was sorry since I wanted to build The Sex Pistols as the next classic rock band to follow The Rolling Stones. After all, The Rolling Stones had started off as the most shocking band in the world, with Mick Jagger being arrested for possessing drugs and scandalising public opinion. By 1978 The Stones had been going for more than fifteen years and they had become part of the rock and roll Establishment. And they didn’t look like stopping.

  Coping with success obviously brings its own difficulties for a rock band, but getting your name into people’s minds is almost the hardest thing to achieve. The Sex Pistols had certainly entered the world’s vocabulary – if only as a byword for all that most people found revolting – and I felt that they were crazy to throw away that advantage. I tried to persuade Johnny that The Sex Pistols could use their name in slightly different ways, and perhaps move away from the extreme punk image they had made their own. I also wanted to push them overseas: Never Mind The Bollocks had sold only 300,000 records overseas, about the same number as it had sold in Britain, and I felt sure that they could do much better with successive albums. After Mike Oldfield’s instant success and then his withdrawal from public life, I was determined that The Sex Pistols would not collapse as well. They were Virgin’s top band and they had been the catalyst both for Virgin Music’s wider success and a whole new wave of rock music. But Johnny was in no mood to listen.

  On our final evening we found a Rasta bar up along the coast from Kingston which sold fish in strong jerk sauce. We sat outside watching the sea. A flock of pelicans were dive-bombing in formation, and we watched them methodically work their way through shoals of fish, each one peeling off and diving down, tucking in their wings before plunging into the water. We drank Red Stripe beer and listened to Bob Marley. Although I kept turning the conversation back to what The Sex Pistols could do, Johnny was not really listening.

  There was a world of difference between Mike Oldfield and The Sex Pistols. But both of them had found that they could not cope with the pressures of fame. From my point of view, as the head of their record company, there was a further difference: Mike Oldfield had made Virgin Music a tremendous amount of money that we had spent building up the company and signing new acts. We would not be in business without him. Although The Sex Pistols had been number one with ‘God Save The Queen’, and their album, Never Mind The Bollocks, had also been number one, Virgin had not made very much money from the group.

  As I sat there with Johnny Rotten on the Jamaican beach, I was forced to accept that Virgin would never make much more money from The Sex Pistols. Malcolm McLaren had arranged for The Sex Pistols to be in a film called The Great Rock And Roll Swindle, and I wondered whether there might be a soundtrack which we could release from that, but, otherwise, Simon, Ken and I were going to have to accept that from now on The Sex Pistols were not a going concern.

  Although it was highly frustrating to see them falling apart – and in a far worse way than Mike Oldfield, who continued to produce records which sold well – there was some consolation in that, after we had signed The Sex Pistols, Virgin had become the smart record label for punk and new-wave bands to sign with. The music world had seen the promotion which we had put behind The Sex Pistols, and a whole new generation of exciting bands was approaching us. Simon had picked up bands such as The Motors, XTC, The Skids, Magazine, Penetration and The Members which were all selling well, and another band called The Human League were building up a following. Virgin Music Publishing had signed a schoolteacher from Newcastle called Gordon Sumner who used the stage name ‘Sting’ and sang with a band called Last Exit who were thought to have some promise.

  I returned to the Kingston Sheraton, mulling over Virgin’s prospects without The Sex Pistols. There was a message from Joan, asking me to call her.

  ‘Shall we meet in New York?’ she asked.

  I left Jamaica the next morning.

  11 Living on the edge

  1978–1980

  I MET JOAN IN New York. Her attempt to patch up her marriage with Ronnie had failed. We spent a week in Manhattan and felt like refugees. My divorce from Kristen had yet to come through, and Joan had only days previously separated from Ronnie. We were thinking of escaping from New York to spend some time together alone, out of reach from any telephone, when somebody asked me if I had named Virgin Music after the Virgin Islands. The answer was no – but they sounded like just the romantic haven that Joan and I needed.

  On impulse, Joan and I decided to fly down to the Virgin Islands. We had nowhere to stay and not very much money, but I heard that if you expressed a serious interest in buying an island the local estate agent would put you up for nothing in a grand villa and fly you all around the Virgin Islands by helicopter. This sounded rather fun. I cheekily made a few calls, and, sure enough, when I introduced myself and mentioned The Sex Pistols and Mike Oldfield and that Virgin Music was really expanding and we wanted to buy an island where our rock stars could come and get away from it all, and perhaps put a recording studio there, the estate agent began to get very excited.

  Joan and I flew down to the Virgin Islands, where we were greeted like royalty and ushered into a sumptuous villa. The next day we were flown by helicopter all over the Virgin Islands as the estate agent showed us the islands that were for sale. We pretended we quite liked the first two islands we saw, but we asked him whether there were any more.

  ‘There’s one more which is a real little jewel,’ he said. ‘It’s being sold by a British lord who’s never been here. It’s called Necker Island, but I don’t think it’s a wise idea because it’s miles from anywhere.’

  That did it.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Please can we see it?’

  As we flew to Necker Island, I looked down from the helicopter window and marvelled at the clear pale-blue sea. We landed on a white sandy beach.

  ‘There’s no water on the island,’ said the estate agent. ‘The last known inhabitants were two journalists who came here on a survival course. They radioed for help before the week was out. It’s the most beautiful island in the whole archipelago, but it needs a lot of money spent on it.’

  There was a hill above the beach. Joan and I set off for the top, to get a view over the whole island. There were no paths, so by the time we reached the top our legs were scratched and bleeding from squeezing through the cacti. But the view from the top was worth it: we saw the reef all around the island and noticed that the beach ran most of the way round the shoreline. The estate agent had told me that leather-backed turtles came up to lay their eggs on the beaches of Necker. The water was so clear that we spotted a giant ray flapping its way serenely along the sandy bottom inside the reef. There were thousands of nesting gulls and terns, and a small flock of pelicans fishing in formation. Higher up, a frigate bird came gliding past on an air current, its vast wings spread wide as it carved its way over the thermals. Looking inland, we saw two saltwater lakes and a small tropical forest. A flock of black parrots flew over the forest canopy. Looking across at the other islands, we could see only their green coastlines: there was not a single house in sight. We walked back down
the hill to find the estate agent.

  ‘How much does he want for it?’ I asked.

  ‘£3 million.’

  Our visions of watching the sunset from the top of the hill faded away. ‘Nice thought,’ Joan said, and we trudged back to the helicopter.

  ‘How much were you thinking of spending?’ the estate agent asked, suddenly smelling a rat.

  ‘We could offer £150,000,’ I said brightly. ‘$200,000,’ I added, trying to make it sound more.

  ‘I see.’

  As we flew back to the villa, it was clear that we were no longer welcome. Talk of $200,000 wasn’t enough to secure us a night at the villa. Our bags were left at the door, and Joan and I hauled them across the village to a bed-and-breakfast. It was clear that there were going to be no more helicopter flights over the islands. Yet Joan and I were determined to buy Necker. We felt that it could be our secret hideaway island, somewhere we could always retreat to. So, although we were practically driven off the Virgin Islands as if we were cattle-rustlers, we vowed to return.

  Back in London, later, I found out that the owner of Necker Island wanted to sell in a hurry. He wanted to construct a building somewhere in Scotland which would cost him around £200,000. I upped my offer to £175,000 and held on for three months. Finally I got a call.

  ‘If you offer £180,000 it’s yours.’

  There was never a hint that £180,000 was only a fraction of the £3 million asking price. So I agreed on the spot, and Necker Island was ours. Even at such a low price, there was a snag: the Virgin Islands’ government had decreed that whoever bought Necker Island would have to develop it within five years or its ownership would pass to them. It would cost a good deal to build a house and pipe the water across from the neighbouring island, but I wanted to go back there with Joan. I was determined to make enough money to afford it.

  Joan and I stayed on Beef Island for the rest of that holiday, and it was there that I set up Virgin Airways. We were trying to catch a flight to Puerto Rico, but the local Puerto Rican scheduled flight was cancelled. The airport terminal was full of stranded passengers. I made a few calls to charter companies, and agreed to charter a plane for $2,000 to Puerto Rico. I divided the price by the number of seats, borrowed a blackboard, and wrote VIRGIN AIRWAYS: $39 SINGLE FLIGHT TO PUERTO RICO. I walked around the airport terminal and soon filled every seat on the charter plane. As we landed at Puerto Rico, a passenger turned to me and said:

  ‘Virgin Airways isn’t too bad – smarten up the service a little and you could be in business.’

  ‘I might just do that,’ I laughed.

  ‘Richard, I want to get married and I want you to be my best man,’ said Mike Oldfield.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ I said. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘She’s the daughter of my therapy teacher.’

  Mike Oldfield had been a lifelong introvert. In September 1976 he went on a therapy course in Wales; this seemed to involve being alternately humiliated and praised in front of a group of people. To me, it sounded rather like a crash course in surviving public school or the army. But Mike emerged with his introversion banished. Within days he was posing for some nude photographs in the music press as Rodin’s Le Penseur. And now he wanted to get married.

  ‘How long have you known her?’ I asked.

  ‘Three days.’

  ‘Don’t you want to wait?’

  ‘I can’t wait,’ he said. ‘She won’t sleep with me until we’re married. It’s tomorrow at Chelsea Register Office.’

  Having failed to persuade him out of it, Joan and I went along to the register office and waited for Mike and his bride. We brought two carved African stools with us as wedding presents. We put them down on the pavement outside and sat on them before Mike’s arrival. A stream of men and women passed us and emerged as man and wife. As we sat and waited I could feel the whole idea of marriage becoming less and less appealing. Both Joan and I had suffered failed marriages, and the sight of this production line of wedded couples coming out every six and a half minutes from the register office and, in our jaundiced view, heading for the divorce lawyers put us off saying the vows to each other again. They seemed to ring hollow. I knew that I loved Joan, but I felt we didn’t need to say the clichéd words to confirm it.

  Mike and Sarah were married and we gave them the two African stools. We had dinner together that night, but the evening ended early since Mike was so clearly intent on getting Sarah into bed. The next morning the phone rang.

  ‘Richard, I want a divorce.’ It was Mike.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘We’re not compatible,’ Mike said, in a voice which brooked no further questions.

  Mike and Sarah went more or less straight from the register office to the lawyers, and he ended up paying her over £200,000 in alimony. My mind boggles at what went on that night, but whatever happened it must go down as one of the most expensive one-night stands in history.

  In 1977 Virgin as a whole made a pre-tax profit of £400,000; in 1978 the figure increased to £500,000. After the collapse of The Sex Pistols, we were left with a handful of our original artists, the most important being Mike Oldfield, whose albums sold consistently right the way through the advent of punk and new wave. We also had a couple of new signings, both of whom seemed rather esoteric and played synthesiser music: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and The Human League. While these two bands had yet to sell well, XTC, The Skids and Magazine kept their sales going. We also continued to sell well in France and Germany, particularly with Tangerine Dream.

  By 1979, an outsider might have looked at Virgin and come to the conclusion that it was a motley collection of different companies. From our tiny mews house in Vernon Yard, we operated the record shops, which Nik ran; the record company, which was run by Simon and Ken; and the music publishing company, which was run by Carol Wilson. The Manor was going well, and we had expanded our recording business with the purchase of a London recording studio. The original plan to set up everything that a rock star needed, recording, publishing, distribution, and retailing, was beginning to work. On top of this we had also set up Virgin Book Publishing, which was primarily to publish books about music, and biographies and autobiographies of the rock stars.

  In lieu of The Sex Pistols’ future albums, which would now never be made, we had acquired the rights to the film which Malcolm McLaren was producing, The Great Rock And Roll Swindle. This guaranteed one last album, the film soundtrack. In order to pull this film together, we set up Virgin Films, which Nik started to manage.

  Another venture that Nik had set up was The Venue, a nightclub where our bands could play and people could eat and socialise while watching them. As the world of rock music grew increasingly sophisticated, it became clear that bands no longer wanted simply to record their songs and then release them. Pop videos were becoming the most effective way of promoting songs, and some cynics observed that pop videos were as important as the music itself. In order to accommodate this, Nik also set up a film-editing studio where our bands could make and edit their own videos.

  The other service that Virgin should offer our artists was the ability to sell their records overseas. Although we were a tiny company based in a mews house in Notting Hill, I knew that, if we had no overseas companies, we stood no chance of signing the international bands. One of the beauties of rock music is that at the top end of the market it is a purely international commodity. The best measure of a group’s success is how many records they sell overseas. The large multinational companies had a huge advantage over Virgin or Island since, during the negotiation to sign a band, they could point to their sales forces in France and Germany.

  One option open to Virgin was not to compete with the multinationals overseas, but purely to concentrate on the domestic UK market and license our bands overseas in the same way in which we had licensed Mike Oldfield when we first set up. Although this was a tempting option in that it saved overheads, I wasn’t happy with it. Island and Chrysalis adopted th
is approach and I felt that it restricted their growth because they were at the mercy of the overseas licensees. Once you have licensed a band away to another record company, you lose all control of their promotion. As well as wanting to control the prospects of our British bands overseas, we also wanted to be able to attract overseas bands to Virgin. We wanted French, German and American bands to feel that they could sign with us for worldwide rights rather than with the large international record labels.

  With a skeleton staff at Vernon Yard it was difficult to imagine that we could really take on the multinationals on their own terms. But we decided to give it a go. In 1978, Ken set off to New York to establish the Virgin label in America. Rather as Virgin had grown in London, proliferating itself in a number of small houses around Notting Hill, so I imagined that Virgin America would start off with a house in Greenwich Village, and then move slowly around the country buying houses in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other regional centres, so that we didn’t build up one monolithic head office.

  In 1979 I went to France to meet with Jacques Kerner, the French head of PolyGram. I did not know anybody in the French music industry and, although I was ostensibly seeing him with the idea of asking PolyGram to distribute Virgin records, I was really on the lookout for somebody who could set up Virgin in France. Jacques Kerner introduced me to an intriguing-looking man called Patrick Zelnick who ran PolyGram’s record side. Patrick had a vaguely distracted look about him rather like Woody Allen, with thick, wiry, unruly hair and heavy black-framed glasses. Patrick not only looked like Woody Allen, he behaved like him: when we first went out for lunch together, we spent four hours afterward trying to find out where he had parked his car. Patrick told me he had watched Virgin’s progress with interest. He had first tried to meet us when we had a stall at the Cannes Music Festival in 1974, but had only been able to find a sign saying GONE SKIING. Patrick had then started coming over to buy records at the Virgin Records shop on Oxford Street, and he loved Mike Oldfield and Tangerine Dream.