A Personal History of the British Music Industry 103 – John Burgess.

John Burgess

John Burgess was one of the lesser acknowledged stalwarts of Abbey Road, frequently standing in for George Martin as well as producing in his own right, but his story precedes that, so without further ado…

During my National Service I was a nurse at Stanmore, living in Hillingdon and home every weekend playing football for the local team. In fact I was a more regular player than the guys who were actually employed! When I came out in 1951 I was hunting around for a job. I did try to stay in the medical profession because I liked it, but there was nothing there that really turned me on, especially from the money point of view. The wages were miserable in the medical profession – still are (!). So I just touted around. Living in Hillingdon, EMI was quite a big employer of people in those days, certainly in Hayes. So I cycled round there and got an interview with L.G. Wood, and he turned me down. He said ‘you’re the type of person we need, but not the type of person I need.’ He was an EMI sales manager at the time and was searching for a letter writer to deal with complaints from the public. He didn’t think I was right for that but he did say ‘we do need someone in our promotions department‘ which at that time was run by John Whittle and a guy called David Evans. They were both classical people to the top of their heads and they needed someone to do public relations, press or whatever. They took me on as a PR and that’s how my career at EMI started.

My job was literally to contact the music papers – very few in those days – go over to the factory which was a short walk away, get the latest records off the racks, package them and send them off to the newspapers. In fact the one that caused me more problems than any of the others was The Gramophone. They wanted classical records and for an opera you would have 10 12″ (single) records which all had to be parcelled up. Gradually I began to concentrate more and more on the pop side as it became more popular. I wasn’t writing press releases – largely it was a service dealt with on the phone. Melody Maker and the NME were going at the time, and a few others. I was involved with the dealer side of things as well, in a public relations capacity. It was all in its infancy. I used to have to go to the dealer with an artist to do record signings. I would accompany an artist with the rep who covered the area, and I can well remember Eddie Calvert, Ronnie Harris of the Coronets, Tony Brent, Billie Anthony – all Columbia label artists – and doing store openings with them. There’d be me, the rep and the artist. The shop would have advertised it in the window ‘so-and-so is coming to sign your records today’, and it was a very successful way of selling records. At that time EMI hadn’t really split the labels, so I was working for all of them.. Well, John Whittle was – he was the Promotion Department boss – so we covered every label. I wasn’t involved with radio at all – that came part of promotion later.

Eddie Calvert, Ruby Murray and Michael Holliday

Eddie Calvert in his day was a big star – Ruby Murray too. They were always delighted to do the signings, never any problems. It was probably as important as local radio is today (2006!). Unfortunately on one or two occasions you would turn up at a shop and there was no-one there at all. That got a bit embarrassing. I remember one day with Ronnie Harris, somewhere around Norwich. Jimmy Hanks was the rep and we were all embarrassed because there were big notices in the window but there was no-one there at all! This was in the early 1950’s, pre-rock’n’roll. Cliff Richard started shortly after that and I’m sure he did some shops as well. It was part and parcel of promotion. You had radio, the newspapers, advertising and dealers. The dealers were very important, far more so than they are today as far as promotion is concerned. I know big shops still do it, but these were tiny shops and they were important enough for EMI. The charts were in their infancy – I think the first one was in the NME (see the interview with Percy Dickins for more information on the charts)

At that time it was all vinyl, 78rpm, 7″ and 10″ and then 12″ LP’s – all in mono. That all began down at Hayes and C.H. Thomas was the MD then. Then we all moved up to Castle Street (in the West End off Oxford Street) which was fantastic. That’s what I enjoyed most. I transferred from John Whittle to Arthur Muxlow who was then in charge on Capitol. I was then, if you like, Capitol promotion manager with a guy called Bernard Cook. This was during the period of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and all those sort of people. EMI bought Capitol at the time of the Castle Street move and I was in at the start of it. In fact I was at the start of everything – the EP’s, 7″records – doing the same promotion with the American artists when they came over.

By that time the radio scene had become much more sophisticated, so I was doing a little plugging as well, but you weren’t put into one little slot – ‘you’re the plugger, you’re the dealer man, you’re the artist man – you did everything. Bernard Cook and I did everything that was going, though I’m sure Arthur Muxlow was sales manager and head of Capitol, so he did everything, though I’m sure he had someone under him who did marketing. We were in Princes House in Castle Street, just for Capitol and we had our own little set-up. My secretary was Edna Dolly Bowers, who became Dolly East. She was sixteen-and-a-half when I interviewed her for her first job. I was never involved with what we released, but nearly everything we put out was a massive seller – the original Carousel, all the shows, Oklahoma – you couldn’t go wrong with them – it was ridiculous. I’ve still got a lot of those records upstairs.

Arthur Muxlow didn’t decide which records were released but he did instigate the EMI programmes on Radio Luxembourg with Pete Murray and all the names of that era. Ray Orchard had something to do with Muxlow’s wife. He was Canadian and I remember the parties at Luxembourg with her, Arthur and Ray. Muxlow was a brilliant promotion man – he spent a lot of money but he was brilliant. He left Capitol and returned to EMI and they made him sales manager again and then he was sacked- something to do with the amount of money he’d spent on the Luxembourg programmes I think. He was sacked and I think he lived abroad for a couple of years, came back by himself – his wife had left him by this time. L.G. Wood gave him a job down at Hayes in the royalties department, which was a terribly sad end for such a brilliant guy. He died alone in his flat, just never turned up for work one day. He did a great job for EMI but I think he just went over the top a bit with money and L.G.Wood was notoriously mean and they would never spend money on promotional things like they do today. Arthur was probably a little ahead of his time because whatever he spent he always got full value. He signed up all these disc jockeys and I know they were all on good money at the time, which must have hurt L.G. Wood like mad.

L.G. Wood (left)

I mentioned to John that Wally Ridley had accused L.G.Wood’s meanness having prevented EMI from acquiring the Beatles’ publishing.

No, that’s not true. That’s not a true story. I don’t know what Wally would have known about that. EMI missed out on the publishing purely and simply because Syd Coleman, who ran the HMV publishing side (Ardmore and Beechwood) at that time (Harry Lewis took it on there as well) supervised the demos they’d done at the HMV shop, listened to them and then sent them over to George Martin, which was unusual for Syd because he was Norman Newell’s best friend, but Norman was in America at the time and Syd felt he had to make a fairly quick decision so sent them to George instead. So he signed (the publishing deal for) the first two sides of The Beatles. I was working for Norman at the time and he said to Syd afterwards, ‘why didn’t you send them to John?’.I don’t know what my reaction would have been. I think that, basically, George was very worried about the power of EMI publishing. He heard the tracks and liked them, and I think those two or three titles remain with EMI today, publishing wise. He (Syd) then got hold of Dick James who was struggling at that time, almost going bust, because he felt Dick would do a better job than EMI. He didn’t get involved, he just recommended it and Epstein went and saw Dick James and they did a deal. Dick James actually offered George a large percentage of the publishing side, and George rejected it.

I understood that Columbia and HMV had turned down The Beatles before George heard them.

My memory of it is that George was the only guy at EMI to have heard The Beatles. Norrie was a there at the time, and Ray Martin. I’m pretty sure Norrie never heard them because he was tied up with Cliff Richard or Ruby Murray at the time.

Back to the radio promotion, what were the big programmes of the day that demanded your attention?

The big one was the Saturday morning one, with Jimmy Grant producing..Saturday Club. That was the big one and we used to plug them like man. There were various others, not many. Two Way Family Favourites was a good one. And I think it was the same people who did Housewives’ Choice. And of course Luxembourg was going in those days.

In 1958 I was always popping across from Capitol to EMI in Castle Street. I was going up in the lift one day, and Norman Newell got in and his story is that he fell in love with me in the lift. He thought I had a lot of potential and we had a long chat. A couple of days later I got a phone call asking if I would be interested in being his assistant. Eventually I said ‘yes’ and moved back to Castle Street, up to the top floor with all the A&R people. That was Norman and Ray Martin, Wally Ridley, George and I think at that time Ron Richards was his assistant. They all had assistants except Norman and he wanted the same. Wally I think had Peter Sullivan and John Schroeder was Norrie and Ray’s assistant. His A&R position was different from the others. George just did Parlophone, Wally did HMV and Ray and Norrie did Columbia, whereas Norman’s function was to out records on whichever label he liked. Any music on any label. He did shows and different sorts of artists. I think CH Thomas was still running the joint at that time. Shortly after that he died and Joseph Lockwood took over. He and Norman got on like a house fire, both being of a similar ilk, and the other guys used to get pissed off. We used to have a weekly release meeting in this days and Norman would put out his records on their label! We would call an A&R meeting and invite whoever was around on the sales side and you’d say ‘I’ve just done this Adam Faith record. I want it out on such-and-such a date. I’ve got so-and-so (a plugger) to back it on radio and tv’. ‘ There was never any argument – you didn’t even bother playing it to them. During that period we (A&R) were in control of everything – it was very very successful. There were very few flops – the number of records that didn’t cover their costs was probably 1% – we were making loads and loads of records very cheaply, and also doing loads and loads of auditions. I used to book an afternoon every week at Abbey Road and get people who’d written or sent tapes to me and do an afternoon’d auditions Everyone did it and that’s how we found some of our future artists. But once marketing came in and took over – I think it was when Ron White arrived – A&R became secondary to marketing. That’s when everything started to go wrong. I think the A&R people were more in touch with the buying public than the sales people. This was 1958.

Bernie’s been cut out, but here is rare photo of Ron White.

There was a lot of jumping the gun on American releases. By covering American records with English artists. I did that quite a few times with Adam Faith and got hits out of them. One of George’s biggest ones was Cilla Black’s cover version of a Dionne Warwick hit (Anyone who had a heart). Evie Taylor, Adam Faith’s manager, used to go to America quite a lot and she brought back a couple of titles which we went into the studios and they were hits. His first releases were on HMV. In February and November 1958 I did two records with him and they came out on HMV. The bigger one was High School Confidential. Then he left EMI and went to Top Rank under Dick Rowe and Tony Hatch. Then Norman saw him on the Jack Good TV show. He was out of contract and Norman – he had these hunches – said ‘he looks fantastic on television, we must sign that guy‘ . So we got hold of Evie Taylor and signed him.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Dezo Hoffman/Shutterstock (343417re) ADAM FAITH AND HIS MANAGER EVE TAYLOR Various

Norman said to me ‘I don’t think he’s my type of artist John; it’s really not me. I’ll put him in your hands. I’ll come along to the first session.’, which he did, and we recorded – as was usual in those days – four titles in the three hour session, and Norman literally couldn’t stand the way Adam sang. I think he stayed at the session for about an hour, made a few comments and then left, and never came to another session! He left it all to me. Out of that session we did What do you want, which wasn’t going to be the A-side – that was a thing called From now until forever. And I think we did Poor me on the same session. They were his first two singles and were released in October 1959 and January 1960. He was signed as a solo artiste – The Roulettes were signed later. John Barry had been signed to Norman. He was handled by Evie Taylor as well, and I think it was her idea for John to do the arrangements.

There was a guy on the session, a violinist called Sid Sachs, and to get that pizzicato you’ve got four violinists round a microphone plucking until their fingers bled. Sid was complaining about it to John. Eventually we had to have two sets of four string players because their fingers would start to bleed if you kept the rehearsals going too long. This was pure mono – not even twin track in those days.

John Barry, Eddie Cochran, Adam Faith and Gene Vincent

When Norman first offered me the job, I didn’t have a clue what A&R meant. I’m always been in promotion and press, never in sales. Norman told me what it was all about -‘you’ve got to look after artists; you’ve got to find songs.’ So from the day I joined him I spent most of my life at Abbey Road Studios, either with or without him. He really did throw me in at the deep end. He’d just say ‘well I’m off; I’ll let you carry on with this’. When you go into the studio, not being technical, then you’re faffing around finding out what you’re supposed to be doing! My first-ever recording session was with the Jerry Allen Quartet. He was an organist and I had to do an EP with him and the Rita Williams Singers – basically an instrumental with them oohing and aahing in the background. It was an evening session, so I’d met up with Jerry earlier, and Rita I knew quite well because she was involved in most of Norman’s sessions. I was quite young and immature, and when they all turned up at Studio 2, they brought two cases of beer with them. I started getting worried and thought ‘bloody hell, they’re going to get drunk.’ All we assistants were born and bred to the fact that you don’t go over time. You had three hours to do your tracks and you don’t go over because it costs money. They started breaking open the bottle and playing. It came to the tea break and we hadn’t got anything down at all. I was getting very worried, so I actually went and had a go at Jerry. He was a well known artist in those days and I was just a meagre little assistant, but I thought, ‘well, this is my job. I’ve got to come out of this with three or four titles.’ But then, suddenly, it all swung round and we got the four titles with plenty of time to spare, but discipline within the studios always worried me. You did have to get used to that. Musicians are notoriously undisciplined and you had to be able to say to them ‘come on fellow, let’s get on with it.’ They were quite aware that I wasn’t a musician and used to take liberties at times.

Stuart Eltham was the engineer. He was the first I had used and he was so helpful. I always used him because not only was he a good engineer and very helpful but very musical too. In fact most of the engineers at that time were extremely musical. Instead of being in the studios they probably should have been in A&R.

Stuart Eltham

They (the engineers) used to get quite frustrated with the non-musical assistants. Ron (Richards) wasn’t particularly musical; I don’t think John Shroeder was actually. Peter (Sullivan) wasn’t and I don’t think Bob Barrett was either – he was a writer. I had a very good ear for wrong notes and a very good ear for a song. If you look now at at the titles I’ve produced, most of them were songs that I picked. Producers didn’t get a credit (on the record labels). Never on singles and often not on EP’s or LP’s either. EMI recently released a CD of Adam Faith and it was only because someone knew me and rang to ask if I’d produced all the tracks. In those days you had all those forms to deal with at Abbey Road, performance forms, technical forms, payment forms. But on the forms it would be – “Producer Norman Newell”, because, even though it was John Burgess, he was a nonentity. So the first Adam Faith album that came out, sad ‘produced by Norman Newell’ He just laughed and said ‘well, that’s just life.’. But later, someone remembered and so now all the records go out under my name – doesn’t make much difference because you don’t get any money for it!

Freddie & the Dreamers were the first group I produced that I brought to the company. Danny Betesh had rung me – I had a good relationship with him – to say he’d got this group and would I be interested in seeing them, on spec only. I used to hold auditions and it was on one of them that the group came down from Manchester and they did this song called If you gotta make a fool of somebody which was an American cover. Even though I didn’t think they were particularly good, Freddie had an amazing personality. He used to do that little dance – he did it in the studio. After the audition I said I’d like to sign a contract with him. In this days you drew up your own contract, though the terms were fairly standard. It was a penny (per copy sold) in England and half that in the rest of the world. In those days the artists were over the moon to get a contract. I said I wasn’t too sure about the audition version but that was the song I wanted so they came in a week later and did it again. but it was nowhere as good as the audition one, so, even though it had some wrong bass notes, I used the audition one. In those days there’s was nothing you could do. You couldn’t replace them in those days so they’re still on there!

Mickie Most

Mickie Most was at EMI in those days. He was one of the first people who brought in a finished master for sale, and he brought a version of If you gotta make a fool of somebody. I actually got my record out a week before he did, and that was what put it in the charts. It got a lot of publicity and Danny had secured so much television for the group that we gazumped Mickie. He was furious about that!

Back to the earlier A&R time. There was never any co-operation between the labels. Wally was the most awkward of the A&R men. He was a musician – I think he was in Joe Loss’s band at one time – and I think he aways had the feeling of being the number one man there, and would never discuss things like choice of songs with the other guys. We were all working in close proximity with one another, but you were only interested in your own product. With If you gotta make a fool of somebody I thought at the time that I must get this out quickly (the song had been an American hit for James Ray- released here on Pye International) because it’s a good record. It feels like a hit and people were covering it like you wouldn’t believe in those days – they would cover anything that was going. Mickie had recorded it before me but he couldn’t get it out quicker because the ‘bought-in’ masters took second place to the A&R guys who had more power. So for example I would have had more influence and power over the Sales guys than someone like Derek Everett (who handled Mickie Most), and if I said ‘I want this out’ I’d take precedence. I think Mickie (I think Joe Meek!) was the first independent record producer to bring tapes in for sale – and he seemed to do most of his business with EMI.

I don’t recall anyone bothering if a cover version was being made of a record the company already had. I do recall a little difficulty if George and Norman bother wanted to cover the same song, but then it depended on who the artist was. The A&R department in those days was probably the most efficient, financially. George was always very careful what he spent, Wally was notoriously mean, Norrie was always very practical, and Norman was sometimes a bit over the top because he liked big orchestras. But financially there was no way in the world that the division ever incurred excess costs – they were certainly the best A&R division that EMI ever had. I maintain it was L.G. (Wood) who destroyed it because he wouldn’t come up with terms like putting our names on the label. We weren’t even asking for a royalty in those days…just our name on the label. But ‘no’ he said. The policy wasn’t to build up producers; it was to build up the artists.

Norman Newell, flanked by Geoff Love & Vera Lynn

I think Norman was a very good boss and I think I was the luckiest of all the assistants. I know that Peter wasn’t allowed to do much at all. Even though he’d had success, Wally kept him down. George did it to some extent with Ron, whereas I used to go to Norman and say ‘I’ve found this band‘ and he’d say ‘you’re in a situation where it’s your job to find artists, get the songs, take them to a studio and cut a record. That’s your job.’ He was very free and easy with me. I was always as frugal as he was on the money side. He gave me more or less a free hand, especially once he realised I’d taken on the challenge of the A&R division, and he obviously understood that I was comfortable in the studios with all its ingredients, so he left it to me. I’m a great believer in engineers doing their job. I never knob-twiddled! I do remember he started the series of Sadlers Wells albums. We did ‘The Merry Widow’ and ‘Der Rosencavalier’ – always with the full Sadlers Wells company. There was a girl there called June Bronhill. These were big orchestras and big choirs and they were always doing in Studio 1. He’d booked the sessions for three days. On the first day he did it and that evening he came up to me and said “I’ve got to go to America tomorrow so you’ll have to take over the session. Don’t worry about it; just be your normal self.”

Now this is fine if you’re talking about Adam or Freddie & the Dreamers, because I could communicate with them, but when you’re talking about the Sadlers Wells Orchestra, chorus and main singers, it’s an entirely different thing. I’m not classically inclined at all. The conductor was a very famous Austrian, Wilhelm Towsky and he was the man running everything. The usual routine was, we would do a take and the leaders of the individual sections would come in and listen to it, then Wilhelm and the soloists would come in. As far as I was concerned it was fine; I could hear nothing wrong with it. They were quite well-rehearsed and had been doing it at the theatre every night, but Wilhelm sat there and said ‘can we hear that part again’ Then he’d say to me ‘Did you hear anything wrong in it? Is there a wrong note?‘ So I just said ‘no I’ve got perfect pitch – it sounds fine to me.’ And do you know, that taught me a lesson, because he believed me! He actually took my word for it. All the musicians who came in were looking at me at the end of the take to see if it was OK, and I realised you could get away with so much with bullshit. That was such an important lesson to me because it gave me the confidence that I could if necessary, bullshit my way through anything. Incidentally, there WAS nothing wrong with it because we did check it later. I was right. The feeling was good as once you allow musicians to start nit-picking then you start running into an awful lot of problems. Norman has said ‘just finish it off in your normal way’ and I finished the album.

Norman concentrated more on the theatrical side of things, leaving the pop side to me. When we moved to Manchester Square, we were all in the same area on the fourth floor. I was very friendly with Peter, Ron and George. Wally was older. I was very friendly with Ray Martin, but never understood why he and Norrie were working together. They were a partnership. Ray had a lot of hit records – Eddie Calvert was his – and the Ray Martin Orchestra was often on record labels, as was The Norrie Paramor Orchestra. They weren’t actually orchestras, just individual musicians.

Norman used Geoff Love, Tony Osborne, Brian Fahey, Michael Collins, who did the classical stuff, and John Barry. Even if the record came out as Tony Osborne and his Orchestra, or Geoff Love, it would be exactly the same musicians – just either Geoff or Tony’s arrangements. I think George used Johnny Spence. I used Johnny Keating, John Barry and Tony Osborne – they were all before we started working with groups. I used Johnny Keating with Adam, who got quite big-headed at one time. It seems to me that when an artist gets big-headed, they get rid of everybody who helped them on their way. But he couldn’t get rid of Evie Taylor, try and he might, and for whatever reason he didn’t get rid of me! I had had quite a lot of success, even though I hadn’t picked all his title., but you get used to a team and if it’s successful, why change it? So I was with Adam from What do you want until his very last record with EMI, Cowman milk your cow in 1967, (which we recorded in a small Soho studio because Adam was fed up with the large EMI studios. It didn’t work out!). We had 21 consecutive chart records.

In those days publishers were far more active than they are today. We used to have days when publishers would come round you had to listen to them play the piano and sing the song to you. Then it moved on to tapes, and with someone like Adam Faith you were never short of publishers. Freddie Poser of Mills Music used to come round, and the writer would come too.

I had a couple of hit records with Mitch Murray – he came in with his little ukulele and sang two or three songs which we recorded with Adam, and I’m Telling You Now, by Freddie & the Dreamers, got to No.1. in America. He wrote that with Peter Calendar.

Peter Callander and Mitch Murray

Mitch was with Feldmans and Ronnie Beck was a plugger in those days. He found Queen before anyone else and I think their first productions were with Feldmans; but he left the business for some reason. I think he had a drink problem. He was assistant to Ben Nisbet.

Ben Nisbet

A lot of the day was spent listening to music. When you heard something good, I tended to phone an arranger first to see what they could do with it. Then I’d call Adam to ask him to come and listen. They used to come into the office a lot more than they do now. Once you’d had some recording success your name got to be known throughout the business and suddenly you’d get artists thrown at you left right and centre. Ken Pitt brought me David Bowie with the demo of Space Oddity. I said ‘if this is a demo you don’t need to do much more than this, but I’d love to produce it.’ He was on Philips and I had ring L.G. Wood to get permission because I was contractually tied to EMI, and he refused permission. When the record came out, produced by Gus Dudgeon I think, it was basically the same as they’d played in my office. I knew Ken through Manfred Mann – they were mine. Ken brought them to me and I had then from 1963-1966. They came in and did one of my auditions and we sat in the studio restaurant afterwards and I said ‘yes, I’d like to sign you but I hate your name!’ It was The Huggs Blue Mann Five (actually it was ther Mann-Huggs Blues Brothers) So I said ‘if you accept my conditions I want to give you a recording contract. I want to call you Manfred Mann’ which obviously went down well with Manny, but Paul hated it, and the rest of the band weren’t too keen either. But I said ‘call yourselves Manfred Mann and you’ve got a contract‘ and they were so keen to get the contract that they agreed to nit. I think it was the one of the best things I ever did. Even the band (they had a big article in the News of the World after their success) said at the time ‘we hated the name John Burgess gave us and we hated the tracks he chose for us, but we have go to give him credit because they were all hits and he was right and we were wrong.’)

Why Should We Not was written by the boys, I think, and I thought it was a lovely track – I really did. This was followed by Cock-a-hoop but I suppose the reason they really hit was 5-4-3-2-1. They carried on for three years and then they had a falling out. They were a brilliant band in my opinion but Mann was a funny guy, really South African and very dogmatic. In the early days I used to be able to say ‘that’s it’ but as it got later and later they used to arguing more, and that’s when the hits stopped . The last one I had with them was Pretty Flamingo. The song was brought to me by Cyril Shane. He actually sang it to me in the office and persuaded me to do it. He was very persistent. He was a band singer with the Squadronaires in his youth and he thought the song was just right for them.

Then they asked me to go with them to Philips. Paul had said he didn’t want to stay with the band any more, he wanted to go solo. They still wanted me to look after them from the record point of view, but again EMI said ‘no’. Even though by then I had gone independent I couldn’t get out of the contract. EMI had employed the whole of AIR and that was it. The only one of us who could do things outside of the contract was Peter (Sullivan) who was working for Decca at the time – he was handling Tom, Engelbert and Lulu, and that was allowed. Anything else we produced had to go to EMI.

My first contract was for a total of £75,000 over five years. It was the most complicated contract you’ve ever seen in your life. By this time we were on royalties and it included George’s royalties as well. It all started from January 1965. Anything after that we would get points , but you had to be a mathematician to work them out. Nothing was simple with L.G. – and there was also 10 or 15% breakages (?). So everything worked out at 85% and we were basically screwed. The trouble with the four of us when we left EMI was that we were green. We were good at the A&R side but we weren’t very together far as contracts were concerned.

For example, I used to produce Peter & Gordon. Norman signed them but I produced them. World Without Love was a No.I. all around the world. Their royalty was a penny in England and a ha’penny in the rest of the world (a farthing each) and I always remember Peter saying to be, ‘God, I made £490 on that record! He was far more together. Gordon was a typical ‘muso’, but Peter was the guiding light. He has always been together. I forecast even in those days, that he would become a good producer because he always knew exactly what he wanted. They broke up eventually because Peter was becoming more and more ambitious. He didn’t like touring, so he joined Apple and produced James Taylor.

We (AIR) left EMI and started off in Baker Street, opposite the Apple shop, where we had a fourth floor office, George and Ron – and Judy was their secretary. There there was Peter (Sullivan) and myself – Carol Weston was our secretary and there was Shirley as well with George so that was seven of us. Carol had joined me when she was 17 and was in the typing pool at EMI, and she stayed with us. Norman was very upset when I left – he didn’t talk to me for a long while,. Norman was an expensive producer and when we went out on our own there was the financial consideration to be taken into account. It was mainly the groups that were making all the money at that time. There were very few big orchestral records or singers in the charts, so George said ‘I don’t want to ask Norman because he could be expensive.’ That move was the beginning of the end of house producers at record companies. When we left, Norrie took over A&R – it was the break-up of the EMI team and other people followed. We were the first independent production company.

I was probably the busiest of all of us. George had his Beatles stuff, John Barry carried on. I did Cliff Bennett, Climax Blues Band. Chris Thomas was our assistant But he mainly worked for George – in fact he produced some of the Beatles’ stuff under George. Peter concentrated on Tom Jones, Engelbert and Lulu. He had a couple of hits with Kathy Kirby and Jonathan King. Once we got the company started, it worked out that George was the chairman, Peter was recording his Decca artists, I was the accounts man and Ron was in charge of publishing. We’d started our own publishing company and incidentally, signed Elton John. Dick James screwed us out of Elton as he had all the money which we didn’t. We had The Hollies signed to us for publishing and Elton was signed to the Hollies’ company, so it did all come under Ron Richards.

When the five-year contract was up, we did a second deal with L.G. Wood which was much better. It was also for five years and was all down to new material. We’d covered the first contract within a year and a half, so we were in credit. The second contract was much larger. In total we were with EMI for a total of eight years on an independent basis. We were screwed on the first one and, I suppose, made up for it on the second one. I think we had to offer the product to EMI first and then we could take it somewhere else. Everything we took to them they were turning down….so it was awkward and it wasn’t working and we were as pleased to get out of that contract as they probably were. We did two years and got paid for three. We were the only true independent for a few years and then we sold out to Chrysalis, which was the most stupid thing we did in our whole life. The reason we sold out was that we’d had three offers to buy us. The one was from Gordon Mills at MAM. We’d been going for under year under our first contract with EMI and he offered £2million. Ron Richard negotiated the deal, we all agreed on it and went down to Gordon’s big house in Weybridge, had a lovely dinner, shook hands on the deal. We were going to be tied to the contract for ten years with fantastic salaries. He got Peter (Sullivan) whom he wanted for all artists, and he got George. He went to his board of directors – MAM was a public company – and they disagreed. They didn’t pull out, but came back to us and offered the same amount of money, but most to in over-valued shares and a small amount of cash, and we rejected it.

Gordon Mills’ house in Weybridge.

The next person to want to take us over was Dick James. He offered us a fortune. A takeover situation disrupts your whole life for months on end, especially mine because I was the admin guy and had all the accountants coming to see me and asking for details, I think my career as a producer started to go down then. The others were tied up with their artists, Ron had a nervous breakdown after the Gordon Mills episode and he left. He sold his shares to Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, and George had some. So when the Chrysalis deal came along, they bought George, Peter and my shares, and Cook and Greenaway’s. Before that Dick had offered us this deal. Dick and George had been good friends. Dick was originally a singer and George had produced his Robin Hood record.

No producer credit!

George regretted not having a piece of the publishing. I did too. Chris Wright made us an offer which finally went through and I think we joined them in 1974. If we had to get into bed with someone, they were as good as any. They made no demands on us. We basically ran the company exactly as we wanted – I never had to go to Chris or Terry (Ellis) for permission to do what I wanted. I was by then managing director, running the studios at Oxford Circus and still carrying on my few productions roles.

AIR was on the top floor to the best of my recollection.

Then I started up my own management company – AIR Management. I had all the studio engineers and producers – John Kelly, Geoff Emetic, Steve Nye and George – very much an innovation at the time. I was effectively selling our engineers, charging a little excess for them in the studio. minus a little for AIR. And I was still doing a little production work myself. I signed David Dundas, Pipkins. We started a studio in Montserrat which I ran – to do it from London was not the easiest of things. Staffing it was quite a problem. I could get staff to go out there for three to six months, but it was never easy. For engineers it was quite a boring place to record – different if you’re on holiday!

AIR Studios, Montserrat, before and after the volcano

The last production I ever did was Softly Whispering I Love You by The Congregations, written by Cook and Greenaway. I had recorded the track with a singer called Romy Card (I can find no verification of this – anyone know?), but she couldn’t really sing it. So I kept the track and worked on it for about a year. I got Alan Parker to come in on guitar, a school choir of about 60 and it came out about a year later. I got in to a lot of trouble with it because the school teacher threatened to sue EMI and me, for taking advantage of 60 children. He said than even though we’d paid him a fee. it wasn’t enough. At that time nobody knew it was going to be a hit record – you pay a fee and that’s it. He got himself on television. I watching the early evening news one day and he was being interviewed, saying that this producer John Burgess really cheated us.

One person I felt should have been one of the biggest singer/songwriters was Roger Cook. did about eight albums with him on AIR and we had two hit singles – both in Sweden! This was pre Blue Mink. I remember Roger bringing me Melting Pot and playing it for me. I said I thought it was a good song but not really him. He got upset and said ‘it’s a bloody marvellous song,’ but I didn’t think it was him and so I wouldn’t do it. He stormed off and did it with Blue Mink and it went to number one! I think, even now, if I’d done it with him, it wouldn’t have been a hit. It had to have that black and white dynamic, and it worked. I’ve never heard a solo cover of it. But he, to me, was probably the most talented guy I’ve ever handled. Now he’s doing well in Nashville.

Roger Greenaway & Roger Cook, or David & Jonathan

George originally produced him as David & Jonathan. He, Roger and Tony Burrows were in a backing group (The Kestrels) that I used with Adam Faith in the 1950’s, They were a talented lot. Cooky had a great voice and was a very talented songwriter. EMI did nothing with his albums, but contractually I couldn’t take them anywhere else. In those days it was ‘if we don’t like it we’ll keep it’, or ‘we’ll put it out but we won’t do anything with it.’ whereas if I could have got him free from EMI I’m sure that he would have been a hit solo artists as well. It’s a tragedy that it didn’t happen. He’s a far better songwriter than a lot of Americans who have had success. But there you go – that’s life.

Even though we made a big mistake by going to Chrysalis and not getting nearly as much money as we should have done, they were good partners, and they left us alone. We left Oxford Circus in 1991 and found a new site in Hampstead, and then started spending millions of pounds. I said to George ‘I don’t think we should start another studio – I think it’s the wrong move.’ But he thought we should carry on and find another site, so Dave Harris found Lyndhurst Hall. It was a church that was protected. When you’re trying to build a studio in a place like a church you don’t know what’s beneath the walls or ceiling. The original budget was about £10M, but we went way over that. I think it eventually cost £16.5M and that’s when Chris (Wright) started getting awkward. Another partner had been brought in and I think that pissed George off. George found another partner, the Japanese firm Pioneer. The studio site was owned jointly by Chrysalis and Pioneer and George got Chrysalis interested in s trip to Japan. They were big George Martin fans and put in 50%. Chris never rewarded George for that; Pioneer put in £8M for a studio that didn’t start earning money until the end of 1994. It half opened in 1993. I left at the end of 1993 and I think it took another year for one of the studios to be completed. It’s going well now, but only because they’ve had to write off a lot of the costs. I think they had to write off about £11M so they had a £5M debt. I think Chris got very worried during that period because Chrysalis wasn’t doing very well either and this was probably the reason he had to sell the Chrysalis label to EMI. But George always say ‘yes’ to everything he’s asked to do. I say to him ‘George, you’re out of your mind’ but the deal he got with them is terrible. George wouldn’t let me do the deal. I don’t like Chris Wright and I’d love to have screwed as much as I possibly could out of him, but George wanted to do it himself. To have him on their Board of Directors is such a big thing. I could have got him on the board at WEA and EMI I’m sure would have been delighted to have him around. But for some reason he always downgrades his own worth – it’s a shame.

Lyndhurst Studios, inside and out!

When Chrysalis bought us it included all the Beatles’ (royalty) income except for Yellow Submarine for which George did the soundtrack. I think it took Chrysalis about four years to accept that and pay him back his money – he was very upset. I think he felt he’d been done once by EMI , not getting any Beatles royalties, and suddenly during all the second success he wasn’t getting anything out of that either, because it was part of what we sold. The only time that George has ever received royalties was when I went in and negotiated with Rupert (Perry, President of EMI UK & Ireland at the time) Rupert was bit loath to do it, because he said ‘well, we’re already paying Chrysalis’. The deal was that George wouldn’t get paid on the Chrysalis titles (i.e. Beatles’ releases post the formation of AIR) he would get paid on everything else, going back to record one. Rupert was lovely to deal with because he was fair. Chrysalis made millions out of The Beatles because the royalty payments used to come to me at AIR, being the administrator, and I would put them into the AIR bank account, so I knew exactly how much was coming in every quarter.

l/r: Rupert Perry, Neil Aspinall, Martin Benge, George Martin

Before we sold AIR we had a relationship with EMI whereby our accountant would ring their royalty department and say ‘We’re a bit short of money- can you send us £50,000 and it would be there within two days. When we sold to Chrysalis, myself and Chrysalis MD Terry Connolly went to see L.G. Wood and Terry said ‘we’ve been looking at the books since we bought AIR and we feel you owe us an awful lot of money in Beatles royalties.‘ Two days later I received a cheque for just under £500,000 from L.G. saying ‘this in on account’, because Terry Connolly was going to send in the auditors. From then on the royalties were rolling in from EMI to Chrysalis but George was getting nothing. He would see the cheques rolling in – and we’re talking about a lot of money. That cheque should have been George’s,. or it should have been AIR’s. We had an accountant whose wife was Terry Ellis’s secretary so he knew the situation exactly. We found out later that he (Terry Connolly – confusing!) had been offered a job by Chris Wright if he got the sale to go through. As it turned out, he didn’t get the job.

I’ve often asked George if he feels a little bit bitter seeing all this money going to Chrysalis, but he says ‘no, what I’ve never had I’ve never missed,’ He made a lot of money from all the other artists he handled. He wrote to Colin Southgate to say he never wanted to produce anything for Capitol Records in America. I think they had offended him for some reason. They never realised his part in The Beatles. Didn’t they turn down the first two Beatles’ releases?

The parts of my career that I remember with the most affection are from when I joined Norman Newell to to the time we (the producers) started talking of selling out. Peter Sullivan was the main pusher because he was working with Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck – people with a lot of money. He even bought a Rolls Royce; he was trying to live to their standard and not earning anything like what they were and was getting himself into debt. The only way he could get money was to sell his shares. Ron Richards was for it too originally. When it came down to it, I didn’t want to sell at all. When that went to Chrysalis, Chris Wright said ‘well, you own 25% of AIR. We’ve bought you but we’d like to swap your shares for Chrysalis shares’ but I said I’d rather keep the AIR shares. It was an emotional thing; it was something we’d built up ourselves, and even though we’re comfortable; I’m comfortable, George is a millionaire, we shouldn’t have done it. We lost an awful lot of money out of it because The Beatles’ royalties belonged to AIR, which meant I owned 25% of them. From 1958-1972-3 I was getting £1,500 a year from L.G.Wood, and George was on £3,000 a year – they were fantastic years. I moved from Hayes to Castle Street, to Princess House, back to Castle Street, to Manchester Square, to Baker Street, to Park Street, to Stratford Place, to the studios at Hampstead. The first half was by far the most fun.

I don’t play an active part in the music business today. I’ve managed George for about 30 years but as he’s not doing anything there’s no point in negotiating fees for television as they’re largely standard..same with radio. George & I still have a partnership with Montserrat and we talk a lot about that. I keep in touch with Steve Shrimpton; we got friendly when he managed Paul McCartney. I haven’t been to Chrysalis since the day I left but they still send me tapes!

There the interview , conducted on January 3, 2006, concluded. Neither John or Sir George are around to comment on the last 20 years but to conclude, you may be interested to hear John’s views of the music scene at the turn of the century….so…some of his predictions are spot on!

For pleasure I play Celine Dion, The Corrs. The A&R people are looking for young acts. I like The Lighthouse Family, REM. All Saints are quite good but I don’t think they’ll last. I like the Spice Girls; I think theyr’e very poppy and they’re going to have a short life – won’t be around in ten years’ time.

The 50’s and 60’s and some of the 70’s were original. Nowadays it isn’t original – it’s based on someone else. Boyzone’s record is a great song, but I don’t think they’re going to be around for long. But that’s the pop business. I don’t think the teenage market keeps the business alive – it’s the middle market that keeps it alive. They’re still buying Elton John stuff from 10 years ago. I don’t think the music business will last in to the 2000’s. Steve (Shrimpton) told me WEA is having a terrible year. Phil Collins isn’t selling any records and other top names aren’t selling. Enormous amounts of money went into R.E.M. and nothing is selling. They (WEA) think they’ll have a good Christmas. I think the girl from M People is amazing….there are some acts around…..

And there we petered out……

Text ©David Hughes, 2023. Illustrations gleaned from Safari search and just to illustrate and break up the text.