Finding My Virginity: The New Autobiography

by Richard Branson

  As the ceremony continued into the Olympic Stadium (there was no police raid of the boat on this occasion!), I was waiting for an appearance from another old friend. Mike Oldfield had let me know he was performing, but I had no idea how special it would be. A huge set of tubular bells hung behind Mike as this famously shy performer created the most astonishing wall of noise while dancers and actors transfixed the billion or so people looking on. Then, before the athletes paraded their national flags, a young Virgin artist from Scotland took to the stage. Emeli Sandé had a look of fierce determination on her face as she kicked into a stripped-back rendition of the traditional hymn “Abide With Me,” given a modern twist through some subtle electronic backing rhythms.

  A joyous combination of old and new that melted hearts and stirred souls, it was everything music should be. I felt incredibly proud looking on, seeing Virgin Records at the heart of this uniting moment.

  —

  It wasn’t only record labels that were being hit by the deadly digital combination of Apple and illegal downloading: their influence also caused enormous trouble for the record shops, Virgin Megastores included.

  At its peak in the 1990s we had more than a hundred retail outlets across the UK and dozens more in over twenty countries worldwide. The Virgin Megastore in Paris was the biggest tourist attraction in France—incredibly, it had more visitors than the Louvre. Over in New York, we had opened our Times Square store at a time when the area was riddled with crime and dilapidation; our popularity helped transform the area into a hotspot. Megastores were places young people could be themselves, relax and socialize.

  But by 2005 footfall was dropping and profits were falling. And it wasn’t just the online revolution doing the damage: the big supermarkets also had a huge impact by cherry-picking the most popular albums and massively discounting them. We couldn’t compete, and, with more people moving their record collections online, Virgin Megastores’ days looked numbered. The Virgin board tried to convince me we should sell Megastores before things got worse and I remember sitting in a rare board meeting getting increasingly frustrated.

  “I know we’re losing money, but you can’t put a price on keeping our brand in music and visible on the high street.”

  I continued to look for a way to save the chain. When a prime retail spot on Oxford Street came on the market in August 2007, just a few hundred yards from our original Virgin Records location above a shoe shop, I sensed an opportunity for a Virgin Megastores revival. But our biggest traditional rival, HMV, beat us to the punch by a matter of hours.

  Several deals to sell—with Fopp, private equity groups and HMV themselves—got close without going through. Finally, the Megastores’ management team of Simon Douglas and Steve Peckham, approached us. They felt they could turn it around and wanted to buy the business. I ummed and ahhed. The Megastores had played a huge role in my life, and been a massive part of the Virgin brand. They had kept Virgin young and created a real emotional connection. I was worried that a lot of the heart would be cut out of the brand. But at the same time I came to the conclusion that we no longer needed our Megastores brand in Britain: Virgin Mobile was growing fast and Virgin Media was bringing the brand right into people’s homes: the writing was on the wall for high street music retail, and we had to get out. It hurt me to admit it, but I realized I had probably hung on to the stores for too long already.

  As we signed over the company, I couldn’t help reminiscing about the times I’d spent in the first Virgin store, sitting on pillows smoking joints, having fun. We sold the company without the branding to Simon and Steve in September 2007. They launched Zavvi, an entertainment retailer operating out of our old Virgin Megastores premises, and got off to a decent start. But then the global financial crisis hit toward the end of 2008, and Woolworth’s went bust. On paper, this sounds like a good thing for a company in direct competition with Woolworth’s. But Zavvi’s main supplier of stock, from CDs to DVDs to games, was a company called Entertainment UK—they had inherited the contract from Virgin Megastores. Entertainment UK was a subsidiary of Woolworth’s; when their parent company closed down they went bust, too, and stopped supplying Zavvi. It was right before Christmas, the most important period for any retailer, and Zavvi simply could not get stock on their shelves. Zavvi shut down as well. If we hadn’t sold Virgin Megastores, it might have been us.

  —

  But while the traditional way of selling records might have been drying up, the music industry was learning to make money in different ways: at the same time as digital music was taking hold, the live scene was beginning to flourish in a really lucrative way: here was an experience you had to be there to appreciate, and people were prepared to pay for the privilege.

  While I don’t get to as many gigs as I used to, I still love going to festivals. In the mid-nineties I was pondering the idea of creating a new Virgin music event. There was no point launching just another festival; it had to be different. Then, over a few drinks, Jarvis Cocker from Pulp and Jackie McQuillan came up with the idea for V Festival.

  “Jarvis wondered why Virgin didn’t have a festival already,” Jackie told me.

  “Well, why don’t we? That’s a great idea. We’d have to make it different, though—I don’t want to make something unless it’s unique.”

  “Well, the idea is that we put the same festival on two different sites on the same weekend, with half of the bill playing at each venue on alternate days.”

  “Sounds good. Let’s give it a go!”

  A few months later, we pitched up at Chelmsford and Stafford for the first ever V Festival. I bumped into Jarvis backstage—at least I think it was him. He was dressed up as a giant gorilla, keen to avoid being recognized as he stumbled around the fields. Since then the festival has grown into one of the staples of the music calendar. I’ve been tempted up onstage a few times, mainly to introduce artists like Paul Weller and The Stereophonics. But whenever I’ve stood up in front of thousands of people like that, it always reminds me that I’m happier behind the scenes than in front of a huge crowd.

  What I really like at festivals is strolling around the grounds and hearing what the fans are enjoying. This was especially the case at FreeFest, a festival we put on with Virgin Mobile USA to support youth homelessness charities. As the name suggests, the festival was absolutely free to anybody who volunteered to help people living on the streets, with VIP upgrades for doing thirteen hours’ community service. With donations from the festival we built the RE*Generation House in Washington, DC, to provide shelter for homeless youths.

  At the festival, which was held at the famous Merriweather Post Pavilion in Maryland, the atmosphere was always extra special because the crowds had really earned their place by caring for others. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t room for fun. You could find me behind the bar serving drinks with Flavor Flav, or above the main stage spraying bubbly onto the crowd below, while parachutists landed on the tiny roof alongside me.

  Emboldened by the success of V and FreeFest, in late 2012 we were at work on a deal to bring the Rolling Stones back to the stage. I have always loved Mick Jagger and the boys for their attitude as much as their music. Our histories have often overlapped. I was a very nervous sixteen-year-old when I first interviewed Mick for Student magazine. I can vividly remember walking to his home at 48 Cheyne Walk, my hands shaking as I carried a primitive tape recorder two feet by two wide to record the encounter. He rarely did interviews and seemed to have agreed to do it out of respect for the audacity of a spotty teenager daring to ask in the first place. It wasn’t my finest piece of journalism, but it made me love the Stones even more.

  When Virgin Records got off the ground, my number one target was always the Stones, and we got close to signing them on several occasions. In 1975, the band’s manager, Prince Rupert Loewenstein, tried to fob me off by demanding $3 million. I called his bluff by saying we would offer $4 million. After rushing
across Europe and calling every distributor I had ever come across, I cobbled the money together. Prince Rupert was impressed, but we had started a bidding war and eventually lost out to EMI, who upped their bid to $5 million.

  It put me on the band’s radar, though, and they started to record at our Manor Studio in Oxfordshire. On one memorable occasion there I had to cover for Keith Richards as he ran naked across the lawn with somebody else’s (equally naked) wife, followed closely by her gun-toting husband, who was demanding entry at my front door! When Keith decided to go solo, we brought him to Virgin to release his albums Talk Is Cheap and Main Offender.

  When the Stones came back on the market in 1991, I was determined not to miss out again. There were rumors in the industry that they were past it, but I was convinced they had a good ten years left in them—even that guess has proved to underestimate Mick and co.’s longevity. We worked out a deal that gave us rights to their formidable back catalog as well as releasing their fantastic album Voodoo Lounge. At the signing party above Mossiman’s restaurant, I couldn’t stop grinning, and Mick looked pretty pleased, too.

  “I wouldn’t fancy being an apple between those two sets of gnashers,” said the Stones’ bassist Bill Wyman.

  Letting go of the Rolling Stones so soon after signing them was one of the toughest parts of my decision to sell Virgin Records in March 1992. But my relationship with Mick and Prince Rupert remained strong even after the deal—they were savvy businessmen who understood why I had sold, and it did little harm to the Stones, whose next world tour went on to become the highest grossing tour of all time.

  Fast-forward twenty years and it had been a long time since the Rolling Stones had played live together. Mick and Keith’s tumultuous partnership seemed to be at one of its low points after Keith mocked Mick’s manhood in his autobiography, Life. But 2012 was, after all, the fiftieth anniversary of the band, and surely they wouldn’t let the milestone pass uncelebrated? We were approached by Paul Dainty, a promoter who had worked with the Stones since their first shows. He was trying to get the band back together and wanted to partner with Virgin to do it. I was excited about the prospect of seeing them playing live again after so many years, let alone the idea of putting the gigs on. We launched a new company, Virgin Live, to promote a special series of four shows. Two would be in London and two in New York. Who would have thought that a relationship that had started in the Swinging Sixties would still be going strong five decades later?

  November 29th came round and I traveled to England for the show. I met my kids and went backstage at the O2 Arena to find the band. I felt very nostalgic seeing them together again after all those years. “Keith, you are looking more and more like a pirate,” I laughed—thankfully he did, too. Charlie looked as unfazed about all of the fuss as ever, while Mick’s toothy grin was going strong. Ronnie, meanwhile, was reminiscing about Necker: he had recently been out to the island with his delightful new bride for their honeymoon and we had enjoyed a few games of pool together.

  “It must be twenty years since I’ve seen you all together,” I said.

  “No walks down memory lane now, Ricky,” said Mick.

  You could sense the excitement in the room as we posed for a few photos. We said our good-byes as they had to get ready for the show, and I headed up to our box to watch. As the minutes ticked by until the band came onstage I stood looking out at the huge crowd and decided I wanted to get among them. We made our way through the audience and got close enough to the front just in time to see Mick take the stage in a silver snakeskin jacket and begin his trademark moves. “Paint It Black,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “Satisfaction” and “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” all zipped past, while Javier Bardem pulled out some outrageous dancing in the next row and Penelope Cruz looked on, highly amused. After dancing to “The Last Time” and hoping the lyrics wouldn’t be too portentous, I went to take my seat for a breather. I promptly fell flat on my arse, which only reminded me there is never a right time to sit down during a Stones gig!

  —

  The Rolling Stones’ anniversary in 2012 was swiftly followed by a musical milestone of my own. As the fortieth anniversary of Virgin Records came around in 2013, I was kindly honored with an Outstanding Contribution to Music GRAMMY. In a pre-awards bash the night before, I accepted on behalf of all the people who had helped build our company. It felt strange being in Los Angeles among the industry bigwigs again after so long, and not just because I had to wear a tuxedo. Tom Hanks told me he could remember listening to some of our bands from the seventies.

  “You always had the coolest album sleeves,” he said.

  The likes of P Diddy and Dr. Dre were quick to cite the influence of Virgin Records, too.

  “Now here’s a real entrepreneur,” said Dr. Dre.

  “You’re doing pretty well with Beats!” I said. He went on to sell his headphones business to Apple in a $3 billion deal. It was quite a surreal evening.

  But then the night took a tragic turn. I was wrestling with my tux back in my hotel room when there was a knock on the door. It was the police, asking that I stay in my room while they investigated an incident a few doors down. It turned out Whitney Houston was staying on the same floor, and had sadly passed away in her bathtub. Whitney was a supreme talent and a kind, friendly presence whenever I came across her. Her heartbreaking death reminded us all that business and awards don’t mean that much. There is nothing more important than the health of you and your loved ones.

  Life is certainly too short not to appreciate people who have been significant in it. So when somebody suggested getting all of the old Virgin Records gang together one last time, I decided the moment was right. If not now, when? I traveled over to the UK, wondering how we would get on after all these years. When I walked into a little café in Notting Hill, the others were already there.

  “Jesus, you lot look old,” I said.

  “I was going to say the same thing!” chimed in Nik Powell, my childhood best friend and co-founder of Virgin Records.

  After a cup of coffee we decided to take a walk around some of our old haunts. First off, Nik and I crept into the crypt where we started Student magazine and the Student Advisory Center. To my amazement I found a tattered old leaflet for Student on the floor near one of the tombs.

  “OK, who planted this?” I asked. But everyone assured me it was genuine.

  “They haven’t cleaned down here in forty years,” chuckled Nik. “Well, we never did when we were here.”

  We quickly fell back into the old rhythm. Nik has gone on to build a wonderful education program as director of the National Film and Television School, after producing Oscar-winning films including one of my favorites, The Crying Game. I loved hearing what he and the rest of the boys were up to, and was pleased but not surprised by how well they were all doing.

  We headed to the original Virgin Records store in Notting Hill, which is now a Holland & Barrett shop.

  “This is as anti–rock ‘n’ roll as you can get,” I said, looking up at the health vitamins and supplements.

  “Stop moaning and get into the window,” came the response.

  I duly obliged, recreating a pose I once made in the display as a policeman walked past. The young manager of the shop was far from impressed, and had no idea why I was clambering over his pills and protein shakes: “Sorry,” I said. “I’d explain what we’re doing but you wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  Over lunch we shared some jokes with Tom Newman, the record producer who helped create Tubular Bells. He looks even more like a bohemian bandit these days, but his mind is as sharp as ever.

  “Remember that song we recorded in the toilet at the Manor?” he asked.

  I groaned. “How could you forget recording a band’s bowel movements in the bog?!”

  Roger Dean, the designer who drew the original Virgin Records logo, came along looking as pristine as ever, while Jo
hn Varnom, the PR genius who came up with so many iconic campaigns for us, was still sharp as a tack. We walked over to Vernon Yard next, where our original offices were, and Steve Lewis, our deputy managing director, remembered who sat in which room back in the day.

  “You always had the best office, Richard,” he laughed.

  “Well, I was paying for it, after all!”

  Phil Newell, our technical director, remembered every single incident like it was yesterday, while Stephen Navin, the lawyer who (mostly) kept us out of court, ensured we stayed out of trouble forty years on.

  “It’s been wonderful to catch up with you all,” I said as we sat down for a quick drink in Little Venice. “Let’s not leave it another forty years.”

  “Richard, I’m not sure any of us have that long left!” said Nik.

  I find all reunions strange. When you haven’t seen people for thirty years, you quickly realize they are fundamentally the same but look a lot different. I’m sure it’s what they’re thinking about me, too. The difference is they’ve seen my ugly mug in the press so aren’t as shocked by how I look. Will we see each other more often now? I don’t think so; our lives are spread around the world, and there’s no need to spend too long looking back. But it makes me happy knowing we have managed to remain friends for so long and can still enjoy each other’s company.

  Later, we went to officially celebrate with a special Virgin Records exhibition at Victoria House. I took my mum and the family along for a real walk down memory lane, from Geri Halliwell’s union flag dress to Phil Collins and me posing as suited and booted businessmen. But we were looking to the future, too, with Naughty Boy, Professor Green and Jake Bugg there to keep me on my toes.

  “It looks like we’ve got the same leather jacket on,” I beamed at Jake. I suspect that pleased me more than him!