A few years later, my friend Suhail Rizvi’s father passed away, and he sent me a lovely note that also reflects how I feel about my dad. “As a child he taught me how to live, as an adult he taught me how to parent. When I thought he had nothing left to teach me, he taught me how to die with grace and dignity.” After Dad’s death, it did make me think about my own mortality a bit more, about Joan, about Holly and Sam and my family. I’m sixty-seven, my wife has turned seventy and our children are in their thirties. I vividly remember thinking when Holly was born that when she reached her thirties I really would be old. So, although I hope to live into my nineties, like my parents, it is natural to think about the end a little more.
We all have to accept our own vulnerability—one fact of life is that it doesn’t go on forever. While I don’t think it is important where one’s physical remains are put, I will take up a little piece of the place I love most—Necker. I would be pleased to be buried at the remote, far end of the island under a few stones, with wildlife all around. But I wouldn’t want everybody to gather somberly when it happens. In fact, I would recommend people turn up in swimming costumes, with color blazing, drums beating, humor abounding and love surrounding all. I would like a joyful celebration of my life, not a sad mourning of my death. I think the most pleasing thing for myself and Joan is that we have two fantastic kids who have found two wonderful partners. I’d be very surprised if they aren’t married for life, as Joan and I have stayed together. I am happy my legacy will live on with my family and making a difference like Dad did. He had a kind word for everyone, an infectious laugh, a cheeky streak and a thirst for exploration that I am immensely proud to have inherited. His favorite phrase was “Isn’t life wonderful?” It truly is, though a little less wonderful without him.
—
A few years before his death, my father had passed on some sage advice to my nephew, Jack Brockway. They’d been together on a boat, and Jack had told Dad how he’d heard a sound in the night, decided it was probably nothing and ignored it. Although on that occasion, there had been no problem, my father had chided him for not checking.
“You should always take a look if you hear something unusual at night,” he told him, “especially if there are older people with you. It only takes a minute to check, and it could make all the difference,” he added.
On 22 August 2011, Dad’s advice saved our family’s lives. It was four in the morning and I was asleep in my bed on Necker Island. Outside, torrential rain was lashing against our bedroom window, but tropical storms are relatively common in these parts, so when I woke up and stole a glance at Joan sleeping soundly beside me, I just turned over and closed my eyes again. A few hundred yards away, twenty of our closest friends and family, including Mum, Holly, Sam, Jack, Kate Winslet and my nephew Ned Rocknroll, were sleeping soundly in the Great House.
The danger, however, was greater than anyone realized, with wild winds whipping the palm trees and blowing in an almighty lightning storm: one of those huge bolts of lightning had hit the roof and set it on fire. When Jack woke up, having once again heard a strange noise, he remembered my dad’s advice and got out of bed to look. What he saw was 200-foot-high flames engulfing the Great House and ran to raise the alarm. Sam, who was staying in the house next to ours, heard the commotion, too. He opened his door and saw a blood-red sky before his eyes. He ran to my bedroom and banged his fist against the window.
“Fire at the Great House!” he shouted. “Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
It was one of those stomach-wrenching moments you hope you will never experience. Jack ran right into the flaming house with no hesitation. I charged out of my home stark naked, running to catch Sam as fast as I could. With the hurricane-speed wind rushing around me in the darkness, all I could see was the fire. It was at this moment that I fell, family jewels first, into a cactus. That was excruciatingly painful, but nothing compared with the horrible feeling in my stomach knowing Holly and Mum were inside the house. I disentangled myself and rushed to help, my heart racing.
It was like a scene from a horror movie. Jack was already in the house, leaping from room to room hollering, helping half-asleep kids, grandparents and adults out of the building as it collapsed around them. Fear struck my heart as I arrived at the house when I saw nobody had emerged. Then out of the smoke came Kate carrying my mum, followed by her kids and all my nephews and nieces. As the wind was howling and the rain was screaming down, one thought dominated my mind: where was Holly? Had she woken up? Was she still alive? Then there she was, running toward me and hugging me as we retreated from the house. In a matter of minutes, but what seemed like hours, everyone got out before the fumes overcame them.
As I stood staring in disbelief as the fire raged, I suddenly remembered my notebooks. Not thinking, I dived back into the house to try to rescue them, along with my personal photographs. I could see the fire coming down the corridor—my office was halfway down and I made a run for it. As I threw open my office door I could smell burning wood. The roof and one of the walls were on fire. But the brown cabinet where the notebooks and photographs were kept was not yet alight. I hesitated for a moment in the doorway, saying to myself: how important are these things? Do I really want to risk diving in there and trying to save them, at the risk I could get trapped myself?
Common sense prevailed.
It’s not worth it, I realized.
Get out.
It was the right decision. As I shut the door, I flinched at the sudden pain and realized the handle was already white-hot. I ran back down the burning corridor and out into the pouring rain to join the others. We huddled together in shock as our home burned before our eyes. I turned to see Kate’s fearless young children, ten-year-old Mia and seven-year-old Joe, clinging tightly to their mother.
“Everything’s gone,” I heard someone say.
I thought of the lifetime of diaries and photographs disappearing up in smoke and I turned to Mia and Joe.
“Remember, it’s not material things that matter in life,” I told them. “Things aren’t important, people are. All that matters is that everyone is safe.”
The torrential rain mingled with tears running down my face, but as soon as we were certain everyone had escaped unharmed, all I felt was overwhelming relief. There was nothing we could do for the building: being on a remote island in the middle of a tropical storm, it was no easy task for the fire service to make the dangerous crossing to Necker. Plus, with so much of the Great House built of wood, the fire rapidly consumed it.
The fire burned on long into the morning and we began to think about what we had lost, and what we were so lucky to have clung onto. I counted my lucky stars that everyone was OK. We all gave lots of hugs to Mia and Joe, who are among the bravest children I’ve ever met. Kate couldn’t remember as dramatic a scene in any of her Hollywood films.
“I was wondering when a director was going to shout CUT,” she said.
Humor is usually the best way to deal with a crisis, and we must have looked funny clustered together on the beach, the flames still flickering in the background like the end of a summer blockbuster. I stared into the whites of my family’s eyes, shining bright out of their soot-covered faces, and couldn’t help but smile. Joan and I told stories about the kids growing up in the house. I remembered teaching Sam how to play chess, sitting in my favorite spot with Joan on the balcony looking out at the sunset, smelling the sea, and many nights dancing on the tables. After this bittersweet reminiscing, we pulled out a large blank sheet of paper and began talking about how we could rebuild the house as soon as possible, making it bigger and better than before. I was determined that our wonderful team would stay in the jobs they loved while we did so.
The guests were all scheduled to leave that day, but every single one of them stayed on in solidarity, sleeping on floors and helping to clean up. I was very touched by the way they pitched in. It was surreal watching the sun rise over the
island, as the storm continued to rage around us. The next morning two policemen came over to inspect the blaze. I stood with Joan, Ned and Holly near the foot of the Great House, and saw the policemen gazing up at the house. Then they went to the poolside bar, opened the fridge and pulled out two cans of Red Stripe. We looked at them, they looked back at us and we all smiled. What else could we do?
The fire continued to burn for three days. I began walking in the ruins of the house, feeling haunted and lost, but thankful it was only material possessions lying in the rubble around my feet. I could smell the cinders of my treasured notebooks and our family photos, burned to a crisp, decades of ideas and memories gone forever. Then, as I looked down, I saw another survivor of the fire—Esio Trot, our favorite red-footed tortoise. His stunning rosy feet and beautifully patterned shell were horribly scorched and he was making his way precariously out of the still burning wreckage. I picked him up and rushed him over to Vaman, Necker’s conservation manager, for some emergency treatment. A few years on, Esio has fully recovered and gone on to successfully breed—though his feet and shell still bear the scars of the fire.
There was another happy consequence of the disaster, too. As Kate and her kids stayed on to help clean up, she fell head over heels in love with my nephew Ned. The day before the fire Kate and I had reenacted a classic scene from Titanic, recreating her iconic pose on the bow of my boat Necker Belle. I happily took on Leo DiCaprio’s role. With arms outstretched, she whispered, “I’m flying, Richard!” A day later she was escaping a burning building. A day after that, she fell in love. Within a year, she and Ned were married and now have a beautiful baby boy together named Bear Blaze. Meanwhile, Mum—stubborn and independent as ever in her ninetieth year—was already beginning to deny receiving any help whatsoever to escape the fire.
I kept thinking back to my dad. If he hadn’t had that conversation with Jack, it’s quite likely everybody would have died. He was certainly watching over us. I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. But I do believe that, whatever happens, you can learn from it and create something really positive. Better things can come out of adversity. Like a phoenix from the flames, I was sure the Great House would rise up again even more beautiful than before.
—
Even though the fire took place less than six months before Holly and Freddie were planning on getting married, we were all determined the wedding should go ahead. As we discussed different options, it was Holly who came up with a great idea as to how to proceed.
“Why not get married in the ruins of the Great House?” she suggested.
We all loved the plan, and set about making something wonderful out of the wreckage. With the builders moving in the following day, it would make it unique, as it was a spot on which nobody else could ever again get married. It also meant that the venue was open to the skies, so a marquee had been erected in case of rain. This I wasn’t so sure about.
“Don’t you think it would look more beautiful without the tent?” I asked Joan and Holly.
Their stony looks quickly told me I should keep out of it and let the ladies decide—the marquee stayed. It was the right call: when I woke up on the morning of the wedding, for the first few hours it rained like I hadn’t seen since the Great House fire. The sea became incredibly rough and guests couldn’t make it over to the island for the ceremony. Some hardy souls did manage to swim to the shore, but things weren’t exactly going to plan. I turned to Joan in bed as we watched the rain hammer down.
“I’m worried we’re going to have to cancel the wedding,” I said.
But as Holly came rushing in to see us, throwing an umbrella aside, we gave her the biggest hug in the world and I knew it was all going to work out. I couldn’t believe how beautiful and grown up she looked in her sparkling white dress.
“I’m so, so proud of you,” I told her.
By the time of the ceremony, the weather had transformed into a beautiful day, and all of our guests made it to the celebration. As Holly took hold of my arm to walk up to the special altar, I savored every step, even though inside I was more nervous than I could ever remember being. I tried to hold back the tears, but then caught the eye of Sam sitting in the front row. He was crying with joy during the ceremony, while I hung on tightly to Joan’s arm and smiled with pure happiness.
For Holly and Freddie’s first dance, we had covered over part of the swimming pool. For the music, their favorite singer Ed Sheeran played (he’d become a superstar since agreeing to perform, but being one of the nicest people one could hope to meet, he stuck to his promise and turned up).
I found myself remembering the words of my father, shortly before he died. “I really hope you all have a wonderful time,” he’d said. Looking around at friends and family enjoying themselves, it was clear that everyone was following his wishes. I took Joan’s hand and joined the others in dancing the night away.
CHAPTER 28
Like a Rolling Stone
Toward the end of the 1990s, I began to get that creeping feeling that modern music was passing me by. More and more regularly I would find myself reverting to my old favorites—the Sex Pistols, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd and Bob Marley—when playing records. There was a period when I spun Mike Oldfield’s wonderful Ommadawn album on repeat.
“I genuinely can’t think of a new artist I want to hear,” I told Joan. I was sounding like a stereotypical grumpy old man, and knew that something needed to change.
A few years earlier, I had sold Virgin Records to Thorn EMI in order to give Virgin Atlantic the financial clout to compete with British Airways. Having signed a contract agreeing not to start another record company for at least five years, I had to watch from the sidelines as Virgin Records continued in its new form without me. There was too much talent for it to fail: one of my original partners, Ken Berry, was still at the helm, and new artists like Massive Attack, Soul II Soul, Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers pushed the label forward. Virgin Records maintained our brand in the market and I was still proud to see acts like the Spice Girls bringing girl power to the mainstream at the BRITS in 1997, and the Verve setting the tone for guitar music as Britpop came and went. Even so, it hurt not to be involved.
As soon as I was legally allowed to start a new label, I put my Mike Oldfield records away and got back into the game by launching V2 Records. Our first signing, the Stereophonics, were soon climbing up the bills at festivals and won the Best Newcomers award at the 1998 BRITS. Now there were new artists I really wanted to hear. We went on to nurture the likes of Moby, Elbow and the White Stripes and I loved being back in the business I used to live and breathe.
But even as we were building this new wave of success, the writing was on the wall for the old way of running a record label. In 1999, Sean Parker launched Napster, the innovative peer-to-peer file-sharing site. It started to change the way consumers thought about music, from a physical object they could purchase and cherish into a virtual product they could consume for free. While Napster was gone by 2002, Steve Jobs had in the meantime revolutionized the music business all over again. In October 2001, around eight months after launching iTunes, Apple released the first iPod. Now there was a slick service for people to download music on cheaply, and a stylish device to play it on.
When I spoke to Steve about the iPod, he told me he had got his inspiration from an idea I’d had back in the eighties. I gave an interview to Music Week on 1 April 1986 revealing we were secretly developing a Music Box, which could store every song in the world, and allow people to download any music they wanted for a small fee. “BRANSON’S BOMBSHELL” ran the headline. Four giant computers around Britain would store all the music and it would spell “the end of the music industry as we know it.” Scientists at a top-secret location I couldn’t reveal “due to fears of industrial espionage” had designed the technology, I claimed. That afternoon, my phone was ringing off the hook with nervous record company CEOs who begged
us to cancel the idea. At noon, we put them out of their misery and let them know it was an April Fool.
When I met Steve in San Francisco many years later, he smiled at me and said, “Loved the article, by the way.”
“Which article?”
“The Music Box—I loved the concept. Always thought it was a good idea.”
When the technology caught up with his imagination, the result was the iPod. So it’s entirely possible I had inadvertently played a small part in killing my own business.
Too late, we tried to react and launched our own online music store, Virgin Digital, on 2 September 2005, and our own MP3 player. We had one of the world’s biggest music libraries, with more than 2.5 million songs available to download. But after spending £20 million developing Virgin Digital, we realized our products just didn’t have the simplicity, or the scale of production, to compete with Apple. We had to take it on the chin, and wrote off big losses as we shut down Virgin Digital two years later.
But while the way people were consuming music was changing, the quality of the music I’d been involved with over the years remained undimmed. I was reminded of that a few years later on a warm July evening in 2012, as I watched (and listened to) the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Danny Boyle had turned what can be a stale affair into Isles of Wonder, an extravaganza celebrating everything that makes Britain Great. Suddenly we viewers were cruising along the Thames on a wild rock ‘n’ roll boat ride, down a route I had taken thirty-five years earlier with the Sex Pistols. It was electrifying.
Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography Page 26