Tell me about The Hollies
A guy named Tommy Sanderson worked at Francis Day & Hunter and he used to have his ear to the ground and knew a lot of radio producers in Manchester. This producer phoned Tommy and told him about a Manchester group who were very good and suggested we go and have a look at them. So Tommy and I went up to Liverpool to see them playing at a lunchtime session at The Cavern. I thought they were very good; they had lots of go about them, lots of zest and verve. The funny thing was that The Cavern was so packed the walls were running with perspiration. After they’d finished I went round the curtain which was backstage.
Graham said ‘Hello, how are you?’ and he’s holding this acoustic guitar and it hasn’t got any strings on it! You couldn’t tell – it was just noise. So I said to them, ‘come down (to London) for a test.’ On the test they did Just like me and I said ‘right, I’m going to record you.’ They came into the studio and I said ‘I want to do that song’ The test only takes half an hour, so I recorded Just like me and I never did get it as well as the one on the test, so that was the one I issued – it just had that sparkle.
At about the same time I also recorded Gerry & the Pacemakers’ How do you do it . I was their recording manager, not George, though George always got the credit for it. Mitch Murray came in to my office and played me this song and I said ‘Oh, I like that – that’s a good song’ but I hadn’t got anybody to do it with. This was before The Hollies, so I just put it in my drawer. Then when The Beatles came along, George came into my office and said ‘have you got any songs that might be right for these boys?’ I said ‘there’s a good song’ so that’s what he recorded with them, but they didn’t want it. So when Gerry came along I gave it to him, and also the second one, I like it, both number 1’s. I didn’t think too much of the record at the time, but Dick James, who was the publisher, came into my office and said ‘Ron I think you’ve got a hit.’ The rest is history.
How were you introduced to Gerry & the Pacemakers?
They came through Brian Epstein. I was just handed them on a plate by George. He got The Beatles so he thought I could have Gerry. I’d never heard them – George had seen them but I hadn’t
It was maybe an act that was signed simply because Brian Epstein says ‘here’s another one’!
I’m sure that’s true
So, a lucky hit to match Gerry’s voice with those two songs
When it came to the third record I didn’t have a song for him. Mitch Murray played me various songs that I wasn’t very keen on. Nottie Paramor had recorded Frank Ifield and I remember he made this big hit with an old standard. I said to Bob Barratt, Norrie’s assistant, ‘how come he dug up this old song to make a big hits?’ and he said ‘well, Norrie didn’t really have anything for him, so he asked Frank what he did on his shows that always went down well and he said this particular song, so Norrie said ‘let’s record it.’ I had that in mind and when it came to the situation and I didn’t have a follow-up, I said to Gerry ‘what goes down well in your act?’ and he said You’ll never walk alone, so I said ‘let’s do it.’ When his voice went up high, I’m sitting in the box and thinking ‘oh, shit’ because I was used to the purity of that song.
The Merseybeat explosion had record company people off to Liverpool, Manchester and then Birmingham. Did you not look further that London before?
No we didn’t. We used to go down to the 2 I’s and that’s where George turned down Tommy Steele, but that’s where you got most of your acts from, the Soho clubs. But I used to know the producers in Manchester – that was quite useful.
It got to a point when George and I between us had so many acts, it was unbelievable. I was recording The Hollies, Gerry & the Pacemakers, Jimmy Shand and all of the Scottish stuff. George did it before me – he just unloaded it all on me. Generally we stuck to your own acts but I recorded Cilla quite often. I recorded Matt Monro too – I did the Born Free record. I made that on a Sunday afternoon. George wanted to go away for the weekend so he asked if I’d take the session with Matt, so I did. We had a huge orchestra arranged by John Barry, in No. 1 studio. It was fabulous. We did it from 2.30-5.30pm and that was it. It was done for the film but was never in it.
Matt Monro with John Barry and Born Free lyricist Don Black
After The Hollies’ first few hits – songs they’d been doing in their act, you picked original songs?
Most of us who were producers in those days, we were the boss. George was the only one who let them do it themselves. He didn’t quite know what to do, but he learnt fast!
I was always known as a song man. I always thought I was a good judge of songs. That’s because I started at sixteen and went through the business with songs. George was always much more of a studio man, very technically minded in the studio – that’s why he did lots of tricks with his comedy records. But I always argued with George. I said, ‘look George, 70% of making a hit record happens before you go into the studio.’ In those days , before all the groups came, we used to have arrangers for all the orchestras. I got the artist and I got the song and I used to choose the arranger. I had my own, Johnny Spence and would tell him, as with Jerry Lordan, how I wanted him to write the arrangement, so it had to be in my head. That’s why it’s 70% before you walk into the studio.
When you were plugging songs, were you guided to a particular orchestra because you thought their singer could do that song?
Very much so. I had a song called Zing a little zang and there was an act called The Hedley Ward Trio. They were playing at the Chiswick Empire so I went down to band call on the Monday morning to see them, and gave them the song. They played it on the piano and were quite interested, but wouldn’t decide. I chased them, used to keep going down there, and in the end they relented and started to rehearse it. Once they rehearsed it, I was in, and they played it on every broadcast imaginable.
With The Hollies, you must had loads of pluggers saying ‘I’ve got just the song for your act’?
Used to get it all the time. In fact we’d spend most of our time listening to songs coming in from publishers .
Did they have a link with Graham Gouldman?
No. He did Bus Stop, the song that broke in America.
Can you remember how you chose the third single after the town old songs?
There are songs that have been hits twice over, but never with the artist over a 25 year span – like He ain’t heavy and The air that I breathe. (That’ll be a ‘no’ then!!)
Did you produce everything with them on Parlophone?
Yes, up until Alan left and I brought in a Swedish guy.
You must have had ten years with them?
It was a natural end, and that;’s when I packed it in, about 1970. I was actually in a very bad way mentally when I made The air that I breathe. I used to live in a house in Charlbury, right in the country and they used to come down and hire the village hall so I could rehearse them.
You were part of AIR then?
AIR all started with this business of royalties. On behalf of EMI I went over to the States to record Gerry on a live date. EMI had a little office in New York and while I was over there I found out that all the American producers were getting royalties. I thought ‘this is not on – why don’t we get royalties?’ So I came back and started petitioning for us to have royalties. Norrie said ‘I don’t know why you’re doing that – you’re never going to get them.’ I kept on and on, convinced George and then the senior guys started looking around. EMI signed up an independent Dave Clark Five and Dave was producing his own records and he was getting a royalty, and it was going out on EMI. So that really stirred it up. They’re paying royalties to this guy but not to us. People like Norrie and George went to Len Wood. I wasn’t involved because I was still a junior, but they came back with this royalty which was really very very small. I said to George, ‘OK, that’s fine, let’s accept it’ because now the royalty concept has now been accepted, getting it pushed up is not going to be so difficult. We still weren’t getting the right royalty. George was getting something like one fifth of 1% for The Beatles’ stuff and I was getting 2% for The Hollies.
I’d gone by then. I didn’t like working for a big company. I was getting fed up with Ron White’s memos and things like that. It wasn’t me. I’d seen these guys like Dave Clark and Mickie Most making a lot of money as independents, so I said to my mate Peter (Sullivan) at Decca, who was doing Tom and Engelbert – ‘why don’t we go out on own?’ He said ‘that’s not a bad idea,’ so I said ‘Well, I’ll have a word with George and see what he thinks, and have a word with John (Burgess.)’ George was like this about it and John wouldn’t do it unless George did it. Peter and I had already decided that if they didn’t do it, we were going anyway. We’d have been alright. I lived in Hemel Hempstead at the time and one Saturday evening George and his girlfriend came round and he’s decided to come with us, so I thought ‘that’s great, John will come too now.’
And the other two didn’t want to know?
We didn’t ask them – we didn’t want too many. Norrie said to me ‘I can understand what you’re doing Ron, but I don’t understand why you’ve got Peter Sullivan involved.’ So I said ‘look, Pete makes a lot of dumb records, but when he hits he hits heavy’ Besides, he was a mate of mine too. Then it started to happen. I didn’t leave EMI to make money; I left because I was fed working for a big company and I wanted to be my own man.
Didn’t you have an exclusive tie to EMI?
Yes, we were tied by the artists anyway, but we also had a contract to say that whatever we made they release.
Did you add any artists when you moved? It was an important move but I feel AIR didn’t justify its ambitions
No it didn’t. I think it could have done. We built the studio, so that was a great success, but from an artist point of view it didn’t. This was where I cracked up. I started hitting the bottle. We needed new equipment and I wanted to move the old equipment up to Glasgow or Manchester and open studios all around. George wanted to open a studio on a boat and I thought he was bloody mad. Then he built the studio out in Montserrat. John was managing it. I thought it was madness
AIR studios, Montserrat after the volcano
It was a major move historically
EMI had four studios, which became eight. Decca only had a couple and then there were Philips and Pye.
I gather you were able to record Ella Fitzgerald at Abbey Road
Yes, I recorded in No. 2 for Norman Granz. I did the song People; Johnny Spence did the arrangement and it didn’t sound at all like Ella Fitzgerald to me, so I turned to Norman Granz and he said, ‘that’s alright, just play it back to her.’ I played it back to her and she said, OK, let’s have another go.’, and the next time, POW! it was all there – Ella Fitzgerald as I knew Ella Fitzgerald. Talk about chalk and cheese from the first take to the second take. I was just ridiculous – what an artist! It was just a single while she was visiting London.
Why were they recording there?
Because of our success with The Beatles, I was talking to a senior A&R guy at Capitol and he said ‘how the hell do you get that bass sound?’ All the Capitol artists seemed to think there was some magic about Abbey Road No.2 studio. I went to Gold Star studios in Hollywood where Phil Spector made his records. I was in the tiny little studio, no separation of mikes and I said ‘that’s how he does it.’ Everybody thought he was a genius but he couldn’t do it any other way.
There were a lot of clever people at Abbey Road, the engineers
We took quite a lot of people with us to AIR studios, but as far as studios are concerned my home was always Abbey Road. I’ve got a great affection for Abbey Road. The guys, not only were they good, but they were a dream to work with. Ken Townsend wasn’t there when The Beatles first started. It was a Sgt Major type with a big stuff collar. He came round with Sir Joseph Lockwood when I was recording a cha-cha band and they had all the steel drums going. He walked into the control box with the Chairman and said to turn that monitor down.’ I said ‘here, hang on, I’m employed to make these records – I’ll do it my way.’ There was a big hoo-hah
Ken Townsend
Did you ever make records for anyone other than EMI?
P.J.Proby, but that was for Liberty which was licensed to EMI. He’d been on Decca `and it was Mike Sloman of Liberty who brought him to me. Proby was a real character
Whose idea was it to do two songs from ‘West Side Story’?
I think it was Mike’s idea for the first one, and the second was sort of a natural follow-on. I know when I heard him singing it in the studio I thought ‘this is either bloody good or bloody awful.’ Shirley, my secretary, was here and she thought it was marvellous. He could be impossible to handle. At that time we weren’t getting any royalties. I recorded him in the afternoon and it wasn’t quite right, so I asked him to come back in the evening to dub his voice on the tracks. He came back and said ‘I can’t do it; I’ve got to have the orchestra around me.’ I said, ‘look, I’m not getting any extra money for being here; I’d rather be with my wife and kids at home, so make up your mind – you’re the one losing out, not me.’ It was a licensed label so the Americans should have paid – I never thought of that! But I was happy doing it because I enjoyed making his records.
Quite different from what he did before
And I did Maria as the follow-up, very powerful. He was amazing. He’d go into the studio and say ‘what do you want me to do Nat ‘King’ Cole, Johnny Mathis?’ and he could sing just like them. I’d say ‘no, I want you to do a Proby.’ He really abused himself, booze, drugs, women.
Was it your illness that made you sell your shares in AIR?
I was virtually forced out – they wanted shot of me. Roger (Greenaway?) bought my shares – I don’t know what he got for them. Oh, he sold them to Chrysalis.
MAM, which had Tom Jones and Engelbert wanted to buy us out before that. I didn’t want to know about selling. Peter wanted to sell because he had debts up to here but they offered us £2M at that time. George backed me and we didn’t sell. It was after I’d gone that they sold to Chrysalis.
After you recovered from your breakdown, what did you do?
It wasn’t as simply as that. The last time I earned any money was about 20 years ago (this interview was done on January 1, 1999). I just couldn’t cope. I’ve only come to my real senses in the last six or seven years – it was really bad. I was in that Priory, you keep reading about it.
But the early days must have been fun
Those early days in Denmark Street were like one big family. Everybody knew everybody. The thing that changed the music business was money and the thing that really changed the record business was when we broke big in America. Then you got all the hoods coming in; they could see money, all the dodgy managers. I remember I used to go over to Sweden quite a lot because we had a publishing deal over there and I said ‘If only we could keep it like this’, and then they had Abba and it all changed. People used to be in the business because they liked the music , but then it lured people who had no interest other than making money.
I can remember George and I discussing this – the American companies in the 60’s. Goddard Lieberson, the boss of CBS was an A&R man and we always maintained that the boss of the EMI record division should be a producer or ex-producer. Another reason why I left EMI was because the marketing men were beginning to get the power. When I first became a producer we used to have a meeting every Monday morning where I’d take along anything new I’d just made and the sales guys would be there and I’d walk in with my acetate, play it, they’d listen. I’d say ‘I want it released on the fifth of January’ and that was it. Then it all changed and the marketing men became all powerful and they’d say ‘no, we’re not issuing that one.’ Joe Lockwood was bringing in outside consultants to look at the business. When we booked the studio we’d have a form to fill in to mark out where to put the mics. Then they brought in a red form, which was much more complicated – I imagine that idea came from these outside consultants.
The Beatles would never have seen the light of days if marketing had been like that then.
So, a rather sad end to an EMI man who seemed not to have gained the recognition he so obviously deserved. He recorded The Beatles, he found The Hollies, he made historic recordings with P.J. Proby and Gerry & the Pacemakers, recorded a classic with Matt Monro while George went away for the weekend, started the movement for the producer to get a royalty and spearheaded the concept of AIR London, though it sounds as if his afternoon with Ella Fitzgerald was his proudest moment.
Coming next, a marathon interview which took two sessions, with Walter J. (Wally) Ridley, whose life also started out plugging sheet music in the Charing Cross Road as I recall, and who was an EMI titan or tyrant, depending on who and how you were, for many years
Copyright David Hughes 2020, all illustrations are simply visual diversions, courtesy Google.
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