A Personal History of the British Music Industry 107 – Derek Everett

Derek Everett is another of those long-serving vital industry folk who somehow managed to avoid all the cameras – or maybe they avoided him. So, if you know or worked with him, before you start reading his story, which is littered with household names, do see if you have any photograph of him to add to the preface!

I was an apprentice in the printing trade and after I’d completed my National Service there was still five years left of the apprenticeship. I thought ‘I can’t do that on thirty bob a week – I want to get into the music business.‘ I worked for GEC for a couple of years checking invoices, but was going into every office in Denmark Street and constantly writing to record companies. Eventually I got a reply from L.G. Wood at EMI – would I make an appointment to see him? Eventually I got an appointment to see him in Great Castle Street. What they wanted was someone to print record labels on a hand printing machine. It was the start of the white label DJ copies on 45’s. They had some on 78’s but never used them. With purchase tax at the time, you could press 99 copies of a record before you had to pay tax. So the record companies figured they could use those 99 copies for promotion, but it wasn’t cost effective to print labels just for 99 copies. In my CV, such as it was, I had two years apprenticeship in print as a compositor. LG asked ‘can you do this?’. ‘Yes of course I can.’ He showed me a leaflet showing the Adarna print machine, a little hand press where you set the copy, stick it on the plate and just press the paper up into it.’Yes, I can work one of these’

L.G. Wood (left)

He said ‘well, if I make an appointment, you can go and buy one of those. Oh, and are you interested in music? One question – have you heard of Bonny Lou”?

Yes, I said, she an American kind of country singer – No. 29 in the charts.’ He went ‘you’ve got the job old chap. Incidentally, how did you know that?’ I said ‘I was looking at the magazines in your office before I came in – I just happened to notice it.‘ ‘Very very good’ he said.

So I joined the Sales Promotion Department under John Whittle

He was classical, wasn’t he?

Not at that time – he went into classical afterwards. There was myself, Ronnie Bell, John Burgess and Robert Dockerell. Marketing didn’t exist – this department was probably the start of marketing. We talked through the issues with the salesmen, but my job was to print those bloody labels! I was 20. I learned the politics. You can only print one label at a time. Ray Martin, one of the record producers, said to me one day ‘do you fancy some lunch?’. I thought ‘what’s all this about?’ He said ‘these labels that you print – you couldn’t do mine first, could you?’ I said I thought I could but then they were all at it! There were about six releases a week, so the first person to get the promotion labels printed would be first to start promoting the records. I then got moved into the labels. The first one was MGM where Ronnie Bell was the so-called manager. In 1954-56 EMI was losing RCA and American Columbia (as licensed labels) It was the early funding days of Capitol, and they were looking for more American labels. The first, apart from MGM, was Roulette, where they picked up on Frankie Lymon and released the label through Columbia, Paul Anka from ABC Paramount went through Columbia, and Mercury was set up separately and had its own label.

Ronnie Bell with Connie Francis.

That must have been a big panic time for EMI, losing RCA to its great rival Decca

Particularly as Presley was just breaking. I put together that 10″ Elvis LP – never kept a copy of it. I remember getting ridiculed by the old blokes’ It was compiled here – it had that oblong HMV block at the top.

There were two separate companies in the old Castle Street days. L.G. Wood did the Columbia bit and George Marks was head of HMV, and HMV were like The Untouchables. You couldn’t sell their records in your store unless you had a dealership.

Wally Ridley tells that tale against the company – how he lost Max Bygraves and Frankie Vaughan because of the restricted dealership.

Rock and roll was the big change. We were coming out of the Ruby Murrays, Tony Brents Ronnie Hiltons . Remember Ronnie Harris?

Pete King left Ronnie Scott’s band and went into management. He managed Wee Willie Harris – his wife used to colour Willie’s hair – and we used to do these Sunday concerts at Lewisham Hippodrome or wherever, and there would be a headline like Cliff Richard and the Shadows or Marty Wilde, and the other half of the show would be Wee Willie Harris, Tony Crombie & the Rockets, maybe The Most Brothers – all those aspiring English no-hope rockers. Ronnie Harris used to do some of those as well. The Trocadero at Elephant and Castle was an evil place to play.

Trocadero Elephant & Castle

There were two elements in the crowd – the girls screaming their heads off and the boys doing the total-anti thing, lobbing things at the stage. Ronnie Harris’s big hit was The Story of Tina (well it got to number 12 and was in the chart for three weeks in 1954!). He was a tallish guy with a light Nat ‘King’ Cole type voice, and someone shouted ‘he’s a poof’ and then everyone was shouting it. He then committed professional suicide, stopped singing the song and went “oh, shut up”. The was it. The place erupted and he left the stage with fruit and all sorts being lobbed at him. I thought ‘yes, make records, get them played on the radio, but don’t appear on rock’n’roll package shows, because they’ve come to see Cliff or Marty, and didn’t want this guy singing ballads!’

There was that whole era – Edna Savage, Michael Holliday, then the rock things with American stuff coming in, Paul Anka, Frankie Lymon. The British A&R guys didn’t want to know – they were more interested in ripping off the songs. Ronnie Hilton ripped of almost every Perry Como song.

Wally says he only did it once

I helped Ronnie, and about that time we moved to Manchester Square. Top Rank came into the business and were competing for these American things. There were always whispers that they were on dodgy ground. The Rank hierarchy weren’t really interested in having a record company – they were paying exorbitant fees for American product. EMI never did – “we are EMI – you must be with us, on 3% or 5% or whatever – no advance.’ If you’ve got the power, use it.

\Four major companies and now a new independent trying to get in

I went in one day and somebody said ‘we’ve taken over Rank and we want you to look after it. Go round to their offices at the top end of Oxford Street and see what you can find. You might not find anyone very co-operative as they’ve all been sacked’ I went up there and they had taken everything, lots of empty space. There’d been a fire and they’d taken all their record players with them. There was one guy there, who said ‘it’s all yours mate, if you want it, take it away.’ There were boxes and papers and all sorts. They had had hits – Craig Douglas, John Leyton, Freddie Cannon. We inherited all that. Rank apparently just wanted shot of it. Reportedly they lost a million quid. That’s when I first met an American lawyer, Paul Marshall. He was involved with some of the labels over there, and saw an opportunity to get involved with EMI.

We set up an American office, Transglobal, when Roland Rennie, who was L.G.Wood’s assistant, was sent to New York to put this thing together with Paul Marshall. The office was created so we could be first there to get American masters. The idea was to kill London Records. That was when the Stateside label was set up, to put together all these bits, like Swan, and quite a few of those American labels were inherited from Rank. So I was appointed manager of all that.

(Sir Joseph) Lockwood was in by then. I’m very anti Lockwood, but every week one of my tasks was to analyse the American and British charts, and if we didn’t have six at the top in America, why? And we had to report on the records that weren’t ours. I had to liaise with Roland in New York. Paul Marshall was a rough neck, but a suave American lawyer.

(Paul Marshall died on May 10, 2012 in Florida)

What got you excited before Motown?

Before then they were all one-offs. Things like Dion. My personal love of music was jazz. There was a very vibrant jazz scene at the time – that’s what I did outside the office. Modern jazz. I think nobody knew what was happening musically; we were making it up as we went along. It didn’t matter what you did. There were no guidelines. You couldn’t say ‘oh we did that and it failed.’ Nowadays everything is analysed. The whole rock and roll thing was so rough some British just copied the Americans. There was so much going on. At the same time there was still the other side to the business. Andy Williams and Tony Bennett were still making and selling records. They were flirting a little bit with rock and roll- they were influenced by it all, despite the division. Mitch Miller was adamant it was a five-minute wonder, but actually no one knew. The fact that it grew into this enormous business is incredible.

It created a new business

Publishers ruled the business when I came into it. You had to go to the publisher to agree a release date, and some of them used to play terrible games. Cyril Simons was the bear with the sore head (c.f. Peter Robinson comment at the end of the interview). He was lovely . ‘ right, we’ll put it out on the 3rd of April, no problem.’ Then he’d ring up on the 2nd and say ‘we’ve put the date back, it’s the 17th now.‘ And you’d realise he had recorded a cover version. That’s what he did all the time. But they were also helpful in a way. I knew a guy at Dominion Music – he’d see an opening and he’d say “I’m flying to New York and pick up the publishing. If I get it, will you put it out? I’d say ‘yes’ and we got a lot of recordings like that…Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs, Gary ‘US’ Bonds.

Moving on, we then moved to EMI House, where they had Capitol as a separate label, and Mercury and Liberty. Al Bennett, the guy who sold Capitol, was amazing – these guys don’t exist any more. He bought and sold Liberty about three times, making millions.

Did you ever have any dealings with Morris Levy?

I met him once. My favourite story was…we had a lot of success but they were a mafia company. Their office in New York was not from our Transglobal office. I was over there one time – “you must meet Morris Levy”. We walked round and the guy said ‘oh, he’s not in’, and I said ‘how do you know’ ‘The blinds are up and the windows open – he’s out. If the blinds are drawn he’s in.’

There were some lovely stories of LG dealing with him in New York. They used to take him to dinner and leave him. They’d order and then bugger off circulating the room, doing their bit. Is LG still alive? (No!) He was a lovely man. He worked all the time. The floor in his office used to be covered with piles of papers, and at night most of them would go into this canvas holdall of his. This bag went everywhere with him. He put his life into his work. At one time we were trying to pick up the Bell label, Larry Uttal. I said we should do this. I said ‘this is a hit label, we have to have it.’ Larry came over and we went to lunch, the only time I’d been invited to lunch with LG. ‘you come along old chap.’ Then it got to negotiation over the lunch table, and Larry said something like ‘we want 15% and $590,000′ something like that, and LG said ‘we can give you 5% and $2,000 old chap.’ and I thought ‘this is over, we might as well leave now.’ This went on…’make it 7.5% then’ ‘ I’ll take $45,000.’ The gap was enormous. This went on and on, we left and I said to him ‘we’re not going to get that’ . ‘Don’t worry old chap.’ Apparently negotiations went on after that and I was called upstairs and L.G. said ‘he’s accepted the deal, but do we really want it?’ I said ‘yes, we must have it’, so he said ‘right,on your head be it – we’ll do the deal.’ Luckily the first record was Del Shannon and it was a hit – earned back all the advance!

I found him (LG Wood) a scrupulously fair man – tight but fair. I turned down Little Eva’s The Locomotion’, the reason being that we had so many of these bloody dance things coming off the wall each week – most of them were failing – we had The Donkey, The Flick, The Fly. Despite the fact that they were hits in America didn’t mean they were going to be hits here. So I turned it down. It was a two-record deal, so on the back of that we lost Carole King’s It might as well rain until September. I thought ‘ oh Christ, have I done it now – this is the end. I was in the office late-ish one evening and found LG standing beside me and he said ‘how are things?’ I said ‘fine, I’m just clearing up a few things’. Then he said “were we offered The Locomotion old chap?’ and I said ‘yes we were, and I expect you know we turned it down and also we didn’t get Carole King.’ I thought ‘this is going to be a bollocking’ but he said ‘can’t win ’em all old chap – have a good weekend.’ And he walked out. I thought that was great!

Carole King, Little Eva and…

Presumably the Motown successes were known about?

EMI kept turning them down. The guys from Motown kept coming to EMI saying ‘we want to be with EMI.’ They were flogging off the master tapes for however many thousands they could get.In the early days a lot of people didn’t like that and said that every record sounded the same. LG kept turning them down. We got to the stage when I said ‘I think we’d better do something about it.’ It was very much a word of mouth thing – it was difficult to get radio at the beginning, but I can’t remember how it really came about. Maybe it was because the British independents were beginning to start. I think Dennis Preston was the first to have his own identity – Lansdowne with Norrie Paramor, and a then Dave Clark..

Let’s just finish the Motown story. John Schroeder was the man who recognised Motown and said ‘it (the deal), was just about there and EMI stole it from me.‘

Quite possibly. It was time to strike. But I don’t think they would have gone with Oriole anyway. They really wanted to be associated with EMI. No-one talks about it now, but the whole black and white thing was going on, particularly in America. They all came in and did Finsbury Park Astoria, because Georgie Fame was on the bill.

I did an interview with a man writing a book on Motown, Kingsley Abbott – he was doing a whole history of it. I used to go out to the airport to meet them all and the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society were all there with their banners. It was wonderful for us. They used to come over every three months – Barney Ales and the other one (!Berry Gordy?), and have brain storming sessions. There was me, Rex Oldfield and the sales guy – can’t remember his name.

The licensed repertoire from the UK, like Dave Clark, you as a record company really held the power.

A bit later we used to have these dreadful repertoire meetings. John Snell and Roy Squires would come to these Friday afternoon meetings – Ron White would chair them…it was ‘sit on the fence time’. Lots of independent stuff was coming in and you couldn’t OK it – you had to take it to the bloody meeting. It started 2pm in the board room and you took your stuff in and put it on the machine. There were different ways of playing it. You either took it in so many times that someone would say ‘oh, for Christ’s sake put it out!‘. Maybe you had ‘contractual obligation’ which was a good one if you could prove it. The other one was sit on the fence time – “go back to them next week”. I said to Ron White ‘this is getting ridiculous, we’re not making decisions. I’m getting fed up with going back to Joe Meek, or whoever four weeks in a row and saying we haven’t made a decision – we’ve got to take it back next week‘. Eventually we did make decisions.

Bob Dockerill seemed to making release decisions when he ran ‘The Selection Committee’

Prior to that I can remember when I first joined EMI, we’d sit in a circle and this guy would go round for a decision. He always took the last person’s opinion, regardless of what the others had said. EMI were putting out far too many singles. That went on when I was at CBS – we were releasing 6-10 singles a week.

The creation of the Tamla Motown label was the start of a greater power deciding what was released and what wasn’t.

One of my greatest contractual coups, and it worked to EMI’s advantage, was when there was a mini blues boom and the lucky label was Pye because they had the Chess deal. We had Vee Jay Records which we’d signed, not for the blues or the jazz, but for the Four Seasons. Part of the deal was that we were limited to a certain number of contractual releases. They are out and nothing happened. LG called me one day – “this blues thing old chap, do we have any?’. ‘Yes – Vee Jay’ ‘Oh, put some out.’ I said we’d have to reissue them and of course we then had John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Smith hits. It was a freak and it was because of the Four Seasons.

One we lost was A&M. We had issued some – Herb Alpert – we were doing quite well and I said ‘we ought to look at a deal for A&M instead of just picking up the odd thing’.I went off on holiday and when I came back somebody said ‘we’ve had the people from A&M over and we’re not going to get the deal. We told them we can’t do a label deal‘ and they went to Pye and we lost it.

Arthur Muxlow didn’t come into this, did he?

Arthur was the promotion man. The Radio Luxembourg programmes were his empire. He was a bit big time in a small time way! We used to take the artists down to the theatre.

Was MGM part of your brief in that period?

There were a lot of internal problems at MGM. The first time I went to America was when Ronnie Scott’s club put together a trip to New York to the Jazz Gallery Club, and I’m standing at the bar and hear ‘Derek’ and it was Paul Marshall, the lawyer guy. The second time was with Mickie Most. We had just signed Mickie as an artist and we became very close. Someone had sponsored a trip for him to go to America and he took me with him. I went to LG and said ‘Mickie Most has asked me to go to America with him’ He said ‘We can’t help with paying for it old chap.’ I said ‘no, that’s all right – it’s taken care of.’ So he said ‘well, would you visit some people for me? and he starting writing a list of names. ‘will you be going to Philadelphia? I could pay your train fare from New York to Philadelphia.’ I thought that was wonderful – visit all these people for us and I’ll pay your train fare! Arnold Maxim was the head of MGM and we took Animals and other tracks Mickie had produced. House of the rising sun was six minutes long and really couldn’t be edited. Maxim wanted to edit it and they released a three-minute edit which didn’t work. Eventually they had to succumb and put out the English version. No one had ever done this before – they thought a record had to be no longer than three minutes.

I can remember Berry Gordy saying to me ‘can you translate the lyrics of House of the Rising Sun for me?’ I said ‘well, they’re based on an American blues song’ and he said ‘but we can’t understand what they’re saying’. Nor could I – we were getting used to regional accents for the first time.

Herman’s Hermits. Harvey Lisberg was their manager and used to call me every week they were on Scene at 6.30 and ask me if I was going to watch it. It was on Granada and I couldn’t see it in London. A friend told me I could see it at Granada House in Golden Square. I went in one night and told Harvey I was going to watch it. They said ‘the talent scouts at EMI are watching tonight!’ They sang ‘Mashed potato’ .The lyrics were mashed potato all the way through, but I liked the boy. I tried all the A&R guys but they all turned me down, so I went to Mickie Most and told him about them. He said ‘I’ll do it’, so I told Harvey and he sent Mickie an air ticket to Manchester and the whole thing started from there. The first single was a rip-off of an American hit I found – ‘I’m into something good’. Mickie used to do all his recordings at Kingsway Studios and they came and played on a Sunday afternoon and they were bloody awful., We did a test and Mickie said ‘I can’t use this – they’re useless – this one and that one – they’ve got to go.’ Harvey said ‘ Monday morning, I’ll have a new band for you.’ On Monday morning he said ‘I’ve replaced the two guys – when can we do another one?

Peter Noone and Harvey Lisberg

An elderly business man came in one day who’d had business connections in South Africa and had seen Mickie Most there. I knew Mickie because he was half of The Most Brothers who’d done all these show things. He was a big artist in South Africa – he used to rip off all the Cliff Richard recordings – Cliff wasn’t released there. This guy said Mickie had got a deal with Decca but he’d like to be on EMI. I said ‘OK’. Nothing happened. He had another record on Decca; then he brought Sea Cruise out. It wasn’t a bad record but it reactivated Frankie Ford. We did a two record deal with Mickie and put them both together on an EP. He produced them himself.

What about Dave Clark

I think that deal came in via Roland Rennie. The first release was a cover (Do you love me – which was actually the second Columbia single).

I was put in as the guy to look after him. We sold 250,000 of Glad All Over on the Friday of release. That was the initial order and I had to phone him. I got his dad on the phone and he said ‘250, that’s not bad’. ‘No, Mr. Clark – 250 thousand’ ‘Bloody hell’, he said, ‘I’ll tell him.’ I knew it was going to be a big hit. He had the band over at the Royal Tottenham ballroom. He came to EMI and I took him to the pub round the corner. When we came out there was a crowd of girls outside and they followed us back to EMI, and I thought ‘this is something’. I got on fine with him. He controlled it all. I think he was the first one to have a complete package – he wrote and published it, and he remained very good to me. I was doing a sales conference for American CBS and Dave came into the room and praised me in front of the Americans. It was nice.

Were you involved in the Blue Beat label?

No. Georgie was on the label. I knew the Gunnells from the club scene. I nicked Georgie from there to CBS. There was an industry lunch and, coming out, Rik Gunnell said ‘do you want Georgie on CBS now you’re there?’ And I said ‘yes’ ‘We’ll do it’ he said, ‘it’s yours.’

Why did you move to CBS

EMI was wonderful. There were lots of changes. Geoffrey Bridges was coming in. What I really wanted to get into was British A&R. I’d had a couple of offers. There was a guy who dealt with Norrie Paramor – Bunny Lewis – and I didn’t like him. One day I got a call from RCA. I went to see them, and the guy kept going on about publishing. They kept on, but I didn’t want to do it. They said Bunny Lewis had recommended me most highly. I said ‘I don’t like him’. Another person I didn’t like – Phil Solomon – put me up for an MCA job.

Olav Wyper had left EMI and gone to CBS and in 1966 (?) I got a phone call from him asking me if I’d be interested in the A&R job and would I meet with Ken Glancy.

Olav Wyper.

When we met he just talked music and I thought that was great. He said the job was mine if I wanted it. He said he had a bit of restructuring to do to get me in. I joined CBS the day they moved from their Bond Street offices to Theobalds Road – co-ordinating independent productions. I was going to be head of A&R but Reg Warburton was technically the A&R guy, but they found another job for him. We had two in-house producers – Irvine Martin and Des Champ. There we were making records like there was no tomorrow, spending money like there was a bottomless pit, and selling nothing! They (Irvine and Des) had to go, and Reg agreed to run the studio, and I got in there. Georgie Fame was the first artist I signed. ‘Fame in ’68” – that was our Olav Wyper marketing coup and we went on from there. We had tremendous success. I had to bring in producers so I brought in Mike Smith. 1966 was when I moved there. Mike had left Decca and he came to me with Brian Poole, but said he also wanted to do something with The Tremeloes. I always thought packages worked. If you get something that’s buzzing it feeds off itself – managers, agents and publishers always do it. I asked Mike if he wanted to work (at CBS) as house producer. Ken Glancy was an incredible man. He never involved you with the business problems; he kept them well away from everybody and we just talked about the music and the artists. The rest of the nonsense that goes on – we never knew it existed!

From top left: Tompall Glaser, Ken Glancy, Jerry Bradley, Chet Atkins, Waylon Jennings, Jesse Colter, Willie Nelson.

Many years later I was in an office in Denmark Street and L.G. (Wood) phoned up. He said ‘there’s a fellow going round raking the dirt on Joe Meek. I refused to talk to him. I’m phoning a few friends who worked with Joe before his sad death and I’m recommending we don’t talk to him’. I said ‘fine – I know nothing about Joe Meek except the music.’ I thought that was nice. The guy did actually call me and I told him I got on fine with Joe. So there was nothing else he wanted to talk about. Joe did go off in a huff sometimes, but he’d phone up and apologise. I went over to his place a few times and it was amazing – violin players down the hall, someone else sitting on the toilet. He was a strange character but he had his ideas. At that time Shel Talmy came in and did a few things that were quite successful. He had that terrible lawyer Marty Machat. I never got involved in that sort of thing.

Joe Meek (above), Marty Machat with Leonard Cohen (below)

How long were you at CBS?

Five years, fantastic years, with Ronnie Bell. We had old metal desks and Ron always held the cigarette in the palm of his hand. He was on the phone and he had a cigarette perched on the edge of an open drawer and I saw the cigarette drop into the drawer. He was on the phone, and said ‘excuse me old boy, my desk is on fire.‘ He put the phone down and beat it out and then carried on as if nothing had happened !

I went through two or three days of hell with him because he got offered the job at Top Rank and couldn’t make up his mind whether to take it. I said ‘I can’t tell you – you’ve got to make your own mind up.’ L.G. called him up and said ‘Ronnie, you’re getting in a terrible state over this – will you clear your desk and leave.’ Ronnie came down and said I haven’t been fired but he won’t give me the job back and I’m leaving today,’ That’s how he left EMI.

One of Ronnie’s two autobiographies.

Where did you go from CBS?

To MCA in 1970. After I’d been at CBS for about three years I used to get job offers from people. The next logical step for me was to MD a small company, preferably American. I used to say to (Ken) Glancy, ‘I ought to move on soon. This is becoming a big company; it’s becoming fabulously successful, I want to move on‘ There was the usual yearly sales conference and Glancy phoned and asked me to go up, and there were the directors, Oberstein, Robinson (the finance director) and Glancy said ‘Have a drink kid – I’ve got to tell you I don’t work for this company any more,’ Prior to this I’d just accepted the MCA job, but I hadn’t told anyone. He said ‘I’m doing something I said I’d never do– I’m going to RCA.’ Oberstein grabs me and says ‘let’s go and talk. It’s you or me to take over.’ I said ‘I don’t want it.’ The next morning I thought I’d give him a run for his money, and he changed his persona, becoming all things to all men, everyone’s friend, the whole networking thing. I thought it was hilarious. I went to the head of European operations and said I wanted to resign and that I’d got a new job. He’d said ‘you’ve got a contract; we’ll release you but not for a few weeks, so it would be helpful if you don’t tell anyone.’ So I started to do a bit of MCA business. I was taking a guy from CBS with me and we signed a couple of acts – Osibisa and Wishbone Ash. It was a very strange period.

There had been tremendous problems with MCA in America, losing buckets there, over here and elsewhere. At one time they’d had a fairly large staff and they’d got rid of everybody except three people – this was still with the Decca licence. Brian Brolly knew nothing – he used to phone me for advice at CBS. MCA had 35 artists ‘signed’ but only one had actually signed a contract. As it happened we wanted to rid of most of them, but there were one or two we wanted to hang on to – like Tony Christie.

I brought David Howells with me from CBS. David had been involved in A&R doing the American stuff, but Glancy took that away from him and gave it to me. David got a bit upset about that but I said he could come back into A&R but I wasn’t dividing it into English and American, but singles and albums and he could do the albums.

David Howells

I was told by MCA to sign English acts, but not too many, pull the American roster together but it had to go through Decca. I went over to Decca, dear old Bill Townsley, and I met Sir Edward (Lewis) many times – he was a wonderful man – all he wanted to talk about was cricket. It was a difficult time, power cuts, strikes, shortage of vinyl, but Decca were very good to us and we were giving them hits. This was near the end of the old ‘gentlemen’s’ things were everybody used to get on with each other and respected each other. Then Ken East joined. We had meetings at Decca and he said ‘this is what we’re going to do for you‘ and he never really did anything. The politics were all beginning to get very messy. How did a guy get the rights to the London label and then and then sell it for a lot of money? How did he (not identified!) get the rights to the logo?

One of the greatest stories I was involved with was Jesus Christ Superstar and Robert Stigwood. I joined MCA just as Superstar came out. Basically, Brian Brolly got fired because he’d spent £25,000 on this album which was unheard of money. He’d made this terrible album that nobody except Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice wanted. It began to break all over the world but over here we couldn’t give it away. Same old story – it was too long. We used to have weekly meetings and while Andrew would sit them out in the corner, Tim would try to be helpful. The pattern around the world was that where it had been played in its entirety it broke soon after, even in Italy. Radio Vatican played it; we got on Luxembourg who played a side a night for four nights and in its entirety on the fifth night. It took off the following week. That method of promoting just worked. I said ‘it’s nothing to do with me – that’s poor old Brian’. Stigwood had signed the rights of the project to MCA, record, film and theatre. He came back to them after a while and said ‘you’re obviously not going to do anything with the film and theatre rights, can we have them back?’ And they said yes. Then the whole thing blew up and Stigwood went back to MCA and said ‘would you like to buy the rights back?’ They said ‘yes please’ and paid all this money for the film and stage rights …and they’d given it back to him once!!

It was all in such a turmoil that Mike Maitland came in and had three or four different companies making their own records in different parts of America. He pulled them all together as MCA. Previously it had been Uni, Brunswick, American Decca – now it was all one.

Mike Maitland (second left) flanked by Conway Twitty and Rick Nelson…and others!

There was also a political thing behind MCA and Decca, because of American Decca. Sir Edward thought that morally he had the rights, and Maitland said ‘I can’t upset him.’ I never liked the politics and tried to base the company on the music we put out. Quite a few things were coming our way and they said ‘we don’t want to expand too much..we don’t want more than about ten artists.’ So it was a case of, if we wanted to buy someone, we had to sell someone. I never agreed with that. Jeff Wayne who was working with me, came in with a tape and I said ‘great, we want him but we’ve got the clear it with America.’ It was David Essex’s Rock On. I went to the States and they said ”you’ve got drop someone.’ and I thought ‘this is silly.’ My three year contract was up, so I said ‘I want to move on. I’ve got a hit record and I’ve got to drop someone to get it, so we’ve got to pass on it. This is silly,’ Jeff did a lot of jingles for the advertising company below our offices in Baker Street and and he came in one day and asked if I would be interested in anything that came along. We did Vigrass and Osborne, but I had to turn down David Essex. Two or three years later all the guys at MCA had left, Russ Regan to run Uni etc. We were at MIDEM recounting these stories to one another – all the artists that were turned down went to No.1! They became major No.1. artists

Richard Burton, Jeff Wayne and David Essex.

One time when David Howells and I went to America we took Richard Branson with us, because he had Tubular Bells. No-one knew what to do with it – how do you promote it? David said MCA might be interested in America so we put him and Branson together and they went to Mike Maitland. ‘We don’t want any more British stuff at the moment – you’ve got to tell him ‘no”. We had to tell Branson – he was mad as a hatter.

David Howells

Another part of my job was to liaise with any British acts who were on MCA in America but not here – like The Who and Elton John, Elton used to buy all these millions of records in America, have them shipped to the London office and come in to pick them up. I got on fine with all these people. There was a party to launch Rocket Records which was held on the Western movies lot in Los Angeles. The whole street was full of food and drink, guys doing the gunfights – it was a wonderful night. There’s a big old Western Wagon at the end of the street with horses pulling it. David Howells said ‘step up here, I’ll take your picture.’ It was a hell of a big thing. Branson said ‘hold on Derek, I’ll take you for a ride,’ and he get hold of the reins and pulls this thing down the street. It’s a hell of a weight and I’m thinking he’s going to break his back in a minute. But it starts to gain momentum and then I’m thinking he’s not going to stop this thing now. At the end of the street there’s a band playing – he’s heading towards them and he can;’t stop it. I’m sitting up there and everyone’s saying ‘what’s Derek doing?’ and I can’t get off the thing – it’s too high. The band are all swearing at him and we have to run it into a building to stop it. I’ve got some pictures at home (wonder where they are now!). Richard was great company.

The three years at MCA were good. When I went there I was told ‘nothing untoward, but we ask you to sign the company accounts at the end each year – we will explain to you as much as we want to.‘ There was a lovely old Yorkshire guy who was the head accountant who said ‘what we’re doing is recouping the losses of the last few years, so we won’t show a profit.’ So I never knew how well we did, except for chart-wise with Wishbone Ash, Osibisa and Average White band, whose launch party was upstairs here (Baker Street as I recall) and you couldn’t get in – was wonderful. The two quotes from Mike Maitland on the Average White Band were: “You’ll never sell a band with a name like that”, and “white guys can’t play that kind of music.” I said “you’re wrong“. So they made the album, the white album; it went to Atlantic and sold about five million copies. Again, I think there was talk of mafia connections – the man who ran the whole show was called Levy, but he was charming when I met him. I had just joined and he was always dressed in black. His wife was a specialist in antiques and the whole building was furnished with genuine antiques and you were not allowed to move anything in your own office! He also had a mews house where I went for the interview with Mike Maitland. The idea was that top executives stayed there when they came to London. Mike said “I refuse to stay here – the place is stacked with antiques and I’d be frightened to move.’ Russ Regan, who ran Uni, had an antique book cabinet behind him with a glass door that wouldn’t stay shut and kept hitting him. He wanted to moved it, but they said ‘don’t touch anything!’ .

When I moved into Piccadilly it felt like the beginning of the end of the old MCA. Beautiful building but they mostly revolved around the film business. If they made successful movies they were upon; if they made duff movies the whole business suffered. Just before I joined they’d made three or four big movies in the UK and they all bombed. I heard stories about extraordinary waste – Rolls Royces on call 24 hours a day. We had the soundtrack of American Graffiti and they said the title had to be changed for England because nobody knew what ‘graffiti’ meant. Then the film took off in America and its was ‘don’t change that title – it’s a smash.!’

The next logical step was to do something on my own, and that was Gull. Decca distributed the label, found an office, but then it was the start of the three-day week – couldn’t put the records out until May, I thought. Have I done this wrong? But we did it – David Howells, myself and Monty Babson who worked out at Lansdowne when I first met him with Dennis Preston.

Dennis Preston with Acker Bilk

Gull had a number one in 1975 with Barbados by Typically Tropical. I handed the publishing back when I left – a very silly thing to do. One record doesn’t make an album and that one didn’t. What we made on the single, we lost on the album – should not have done it!

We went into it (Gull records) on David’s premise that it was basically going to be an album label. The fact that we had a hit single kept us in business. We overcame the beginnings and had a folk singer called Steve Ashley, a guy called Ken Elliott (mechanical sounds),mIsotope ( a jazz fusion thing) and picked up If for the UK . We did a jazz instrumental thing called Kaleidoscope with Neil Ardley and did a performance of it at the Festival Hall.

We were very much into that sort of thing. The Decca licence ended, so we did a distribution deal with Pye, and that’s when Ken Glancy came back to the UK as MD of RCA – he called me and said “I want you back.”. Unfortunately I said ‘yes’. RCA was going through tremendous turmoil. The record company was part of their same group as a fast food company and a carpet company. Glancy wasn’t happy because the American company was in a terrible mess. Every marketing manager was also an A&R man, so they could all pick up product. There were four or five of them and it was absolute chaos. The idea was to turn it back into an A&R based company; I was to sit on top of the house producers and the main stuff snd restructure it. This was in 1977. We didn’t do too badly – the main problem was that Glancy was ducking and diving. Every week a new American would come in – head of whatever division, and they were all alike, like ex-generals, crew cuts, rough-neck American guys; all they knew about music was ‘my daughter likes punk.’ Life was all company reports and meetings. Elvis died, which helped me (!) – that kept the company going for a bit. We had a European hit with Baccara. I don’t know how it broke – I think everyone had come back from holiday! The plugger said he was a laughing stock at the BBC – everyone hated it. Obviously we had Dolly Parton and all that (country) stuff, bit it was three years of hell really. The worst record company I’d ever been in. Nobody had a clue. Glancy had lost interest – he’d done America and made a tremendous success there with multi-million sellers, but was just put out to graze to see out his contract. I was a Glancy man and we both agreed to leave.

Baccara

The punk thing (in the late 70’s) was amazing. I’d never seen anything like that before. You’d ship out 150,000 copies of a single and never sell another copy! It went in the charts as No.2 or 3 and went out the next week. Ridiculous. I never knew who bought them.

After I’d left I thought ‘I’ve had enough of this.‘ I’d been friends with Deke Arlon. In fact I’d brought him in to CBS to run their publishing company, April Music way back at its beginning, because he was a runaround at Chappells. It was never official but Glancy said to me ‘look after April Music’. I said ‘oh not again‘, and he said ‘well , find someone to run it and have them report to you,’ Some lady ran it and she was awful and he said ‘ I’ll get rid of her and you get someone in.’ Deke was always in and out of the office. so I said ‘Do you want a job running April Music? You officially report to Glancy but you actually report to me.’ Eventually Deke took it over as the most mammoth thing of all the deals I did – the American catalogues – I used to go to America and get the deals, I stayed close to him when he went to the disastrous York Records.

He’d set this thing up with Sheena Easton and said ‘Chris Neal and I are putting a record company together- why don’t you join us?’ I joined them ostensibly to put together the record company for Chris with Phonogram or Philips, and Brian Shepherd. I forget what we called it – C&D Music?. We signed The Beverley sisters’ daughter and couple of other kids. It didn’t work and I just got involved with Deke’s other businesses, running the companies, trying to stop him spending (which is impossible to do, although the money was flying in…Sheena’s cheques were amazing, Dennis (Waterman) had hits.)

We also had Gerard Kenny whom we all thought was going to be the next Billy Joel, but he never was! I signed him to RCA. John Howells was the sales manager, but it was apparently the “gold watch” album – went straight into the charts and dropped out the following week when word got out that it had been “helped” in. So then we went round everywhere, but everyone’s saying ‘no’, then out of the blue came someone who was working at Tellydisc – the marketing guy Denis Knowles – and they’d had Richard Clayderman selling over half a million copies each. This guy was the marketing man. He said ‘next we have to sign an artist, get his own material, record a Tellydisc album that we own, so instead of handing Richard Clayderman back to Philips as an artist, we’d have everything . We want to do that with Gerard Kenny.’

I thought that was a good idea as we couldn’t give him away, but Deke didn’t want Tellydisc and said he would get Gerard a deal. We went round everywhere all morning and Tellydisc was the last one. Deke wanted to cancel and have lunch, but we went in and Denis said ‘I’d like you meet the head of the company, Charles de Vere.’ ‘The banking family?’, said Deke, and he changed. The guy maps out the deal and it’s unreal; tv spectacular, tv advertising, etc. – you wouldn’t even think of asking someone for this deal. Our legal guys thought it was sheer suicide, but it’s agreed and Deke is having dinner with De Vere. We made an album and booked a theatre for the TV show. It was Tellydisc’s worst-selling record – they must have lost over £750,000 on this one project. I thought at a later stage that someone had made a very elementary mistake that no one owned up. I worked with Deke for six years and thought ‘this is going nowhere.’ We’d had wonderful offers but they took away his independence. Then we went and met with Bernard Delft – what a charming man. He made a genuine offer but Deke didn’t want to work for him. All he wanted was a turnover to live on. I never knew how he got money out of EMI. He got a £300,000 advance against something. I never worked out what, but it never was earned back.

Deke had the ability to make serious offers, but he never went through with them. After it ended, I got a call from Brian Brolly. He said ‘I want to start a record company, Really Useful, and I want you to come in and run it. ‘ OK, sounds good. I had all the plans. No one wanted to know easy-listening music; no one wanted to know middle of the road. Shows were shows and we were going to get them anyway. We’d build a small roster of artists. We set up the office and were getting it together and then Brian left! We got summoned to the boardroom at the Palace Theatre; we look around and there’s no Brian – everyone else was there. There was an announcement “as of 11 o’clock this morning, Brian Brolly has left the company.’ Andrew (Lloyd-Webber) didn’t want to know about the record company because he wasn’t 100% involved. Two years of this and I thought it was getting very silly. Life took over then – I had a heart attack in September 1989. I had a year and a half of my contract to run, but they were very fair until a guy visited and said ‘we think it best if you retire – we’ll pay off your contract and give you the car.’ I thought ‘that’ll do me.’

And so the interview ended – a fascinating insight into the early days of the original vinyl explosion…yet despite a lot of searching, no photograph of Derek has been found. If you know, or even better, if you have one, do let me know. He deserves to be seen!

©David Hughes 2024. All illustrations courtesy DuckDuckGo (for some strange reason they have over ridden Google in the web search hierarchy.