In 1962 I applied to the Central School of Art and, on hearing of my credentials at St Martin’s, a place was created for me. This simple decision was to have a dramatic effect over the next thirty years, because on arrival at Central I met and befriended Rodney Kinsman and Lisa, who was later to become his wife. It was this friendship that created the partnership of OMK Design, which today ranks as one of the top modern furniture companies in Europe. In addition to this, I was about to meet my dream of being in the music business.

Accidents of fate do happen.

I was soon back to my old tricks at the Central School, organising dances and events. I faced major opposition from a few students. My reputation had gone before me: they thought I was far too autocratic in the running of the student unions and suspected I was siphoning off a percentage of the profits (as if I would do a thing like that). The truth will out, though, and a small percentage was indeed siphoned off, but only to pay expenses.

I gradually built a team of about six to eight students. As one success after another was racked up and the profits rose, so our expectations climbed. To quote one of Rice and Lloyd Webber’s songs from Evita, ‘And the Money Kept Rolling In’. It soon became mandatory that I took the whole committee for a slap-up dinner in the Universal Chinese restaurant up the road on the corner of Denmark Street.

In 1962, it was one of the few Chinese restaurants that existed, which only raised the excitement of the uniqueness. It was unheard of for any art student to even think about entering this den of Eastern promise, because no one could afford it. The bill once discharged, we were ready to boogie. Me in my Levi’s and my most loved possessions: my calf-length, Cuban-heeled, blue Anello & Davide boots – they were the business.

With the success of these events and after much canvassing, I was voted in as the president / social secretary of the student union at the Central School of Art in a landslide victory. My first job, however, was not organising dances, but trying to get the restaurant manager of the college off his arse to produce a decent meal for my fellow students. We had received dozens of complaints from students about the inedibility of the food, sloppiness of its serving, and general cleanliness of the cafeteria.

Armed with these three very salient facts, I set off with Rodney Kinsman (who was now my partner in crime), hoping to have reasonable discourse with the restaurant manager. He refused point blank to consider any of our complaints and when we pointed out it might become necessary to boycott the restaurant, he told me to ‘Fuck off’. This, after some discussion, merited some industrial action. We decided on the course to take the next day.

So, it came to pass, the students vs. officialdom, yet another confrontation between the masses and the suits.

‘All out strike!’ we yelled.

We set up a soup kitchen in the Common Room, and had pickets outside the door of the restaurant, which seated two hundred people. The food sat untouched, simmering in the pans. Within forty-eight hours, the battle had been won, with the total capitulation of the restaurant manager and a couple of free meals for Rodney and me thrown in for good measure.

Sometime later, at one of the dances I organised in the October of 1963, a fellow art student approached me from another college. He had a big shock of long ginger hair and a beard to match. He introduced himself to me as Dick Taylor, and he came out with an expression that amused me, as I’d heard something similar in one of those old Hollywood movies.

‘Listen, man,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a band that can really cut it, and we’d love to play at your next Christmas dance.’

‘Sorry,’ I replied, ‘but I’ve already booked the bands for that one.’ I seem to remember it was the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Rodney Slater, their founder, had been a fellow student of mine at St Martin’s and a few years later they would have a hit with ‘I’m the Urban Spaceman’.

Seeing the disappointment in Dick’s face, I said, ‘Give me the name of your band and your address so I can get hold of you and I’ll keep you in mind for another dance.’

‘The Pretty Things,’ he replied.

‘The what?’

‘That’s the name of the band. The Pretty Things.’

‘The Pretty Things.’ I repeated it twice. I was struck immediately by the uniqueness of this name. It was totally fresh and original, and I felt a certain inexplicable excitement.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said, ‘I’ll give you a fiver plus expenses to come and do the Christmas dance.’

Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know what made me book that band, but I did. Dick was delighted and said he’d see me in December.

A few weeks later, the big night arrived and the support group took to the stage. They were fantastic and I was mesmerised. They played the blues, R&B, and rock with a passion, and I knew that somehow I had to be involved. As soon as they’d finished, I dragged Dick and the lead singer, Phil May, over to the bar for a chat.

It turned out that Dick Taylor had just left another band he was playing with, a band by the name of the Rolling Stones, simply because he wanted to play the lead guitar in his own band. Both he and Phil were at art school in Erith, Kent, and the other three members were mates of theirs. I was consumed with this band for the next few weeks, I thought about them morning and night, until finally I asked them if I could be their manager.

It occurred to me that on the club circuit alone, they could probably work four gigs a week in London, each one bringing in £15–20 a night, which meant a gross of £60–80 a week.

Their answer came back a week later.

‘You’re our new manager, Bryan. Get on with it.’

Without realising it at the time, I was about to see the dreams of my youth become a reality. It would be fair to say that I didn’t actually understand that I was now on the first step of a very long ladder.

About two months prior to my meeting with the Pretty Things, I had walked out of Central School of Art into High Holborn, where there was a news vendor selling evening papers. Scrawled across the poster on his stand were the words, Beatles Make Number 1. It was ‘She Loves You’.

This was the off. All around me music was happening, there were newspaper headlines, clubs packed to capacity, and rock ’n’ roll was in the air. The starter’s gun had been fired and something told me that a new phenomenon was about to dominate the world stage.

My days were spent running from Holborn the short distance to Denmark Street, which was commonly known then as Tin Pan Alley. Although the street measured only about eighty yards in length, this road of crumbling buildings was one of the power houses of world music. It housed the main seven or eight top music publishers of the day, plus a myriad number of smaller publishers, sundry agents and managers.

At one end of the street was Regent Sound, the little studio of the day, which recorded both demos and masters, and about halfway down sat La Giaconda café, the hub where all the musicians, songwriters and publishers would gather to meet each other.

The street was always full of people from the music business, but full is a relative term, because the whole music business was quite small at this time. There were only four major record companies – there were no independents then – only a handful of publishers, and the press and other media boiled down to a few producers on each side. Then, of course, there were the hangers on, even then. It all made for a bustling and electric atmosphere. Without knowing why, you simply knew that something magical was about to happen.

My evenings were spent in the clubs of London trying to sort out gigs for my fledgling band. It reminded me of ‘On Broadway’, that great song by the Drifters, and its lyric line that talks about the pain and suffering of trying to get a break. I started at the only natural place, which was at the bottom, and spent hours and days talking to promoters in pubs and clubs, social secretaries, and anyone who had a venue, and gradually I began to fill up the date sheet.

One of the gigs I got in the early days was at the famous 100 Club on Oxford Street.

Within three appearances of the Pretty Things, the crowds were spilling out into the street. By coincidence, the owners of the 100 Club also had a fairly successful agency, which booked bands all around the country. It wasn’t long before I was called into their office to discuss my first major business deal. My excitement knew no bounds for days before this meeting. My only thought was that this could really be the start of something.

I arrived and sat there in deep apprehension. The music business of the sixties was a jungle and bore no relation to the civilised and sanitised business it now resembles. You had to watch your back in every way.

‘Bryan,’ they said, ‘we want to sign your band to a sole agency agreement.’

This meant that they would, for a period of time, be the exclusive agents for the band. Now if someone wants you exclusively, I figured they would have to pay for it. Then and there, I’d have given my back teeth to have been guaranteed a minimum income of £100 a week. A sum I could only dream about. After all, twenty per cent of £100 (my management commission) meant £20 a week, a king’s ransom in 1963, and all this guaranteed for a year.

After the usual toing and froing, I suggested they make me an offer.

‘How would £125 a week do?’

I was so shocked at this generous proposal that I sat there stunned. I looked totally blank, while my mind raced with the enormity of what I had been offered.

I stammered, ‘Well—’

I was interrupted in mid-sentence, as they obviously assumed I was dissatisfied with the offer. I was only going to enquire how they would pay us; would it be on a weekly or monthly basis?

‘Alright,’ they said. ‘£200 a week.’

I was now getting really excited. Without opening my mouth, they had gone from £125, a sum I couldn’t conceive of, up to £200. Even in my unsophisticated and youthful state, something told me I was on a winner here. Without even considering what I was saying, I said, ‘Make it £250 and you’ve got a deal.’

They sucked in their breaths as one, gasped at the enormity of the suggestion, but didn’t say no. I left that office and meandered down Oxford Street into New Oxford Street and finally Holborn, a walk of about twenty minutes, before parking myself down in the canteen at Central with a cup of tea. I sat there for a couple of hours, convincing myself I had blown it, that I had failed at the first major hurdle.

The next morning, I rang my mother. I used my parents’ phone number as my office number, my mother as my secretary, and I would ring her every couple of days to see if she had received any messages. She informed me that the agency had been on the phone and could I go and see them at lunchtime that day.

I did just that and one hour later I was walking down Oxford Street, the happiest man in the world. Here I was still at art school and making more money than I’d ever dreamed of.

A minimum of £50 a week for a year. I thought I’d won the pools.

On the day we signed the contract, I walked down Oxford Street singing ‘On the Street Where You Live’, from the musical My Fair Lady. Like the song says, I was feeling ‘several storeys high’.

Events moved rapidly, and within months the Pretty Things had built a name on the London club circuit. Meanwhile, the Rolling Stones were tearing clubs and audiences apart all over London and, in particular, down in Twickenham. I knew it was all up for grabs as to which of these two bands was going to represent the long-haired rebels of the future. At this time, the Stones had a good lead on us. I now had to secure the band a record deal.

From out of nowhere, I received a call from Jack Baverstock, the A&R man for Fontana Records, who commanded me to attend upon him. The A&R men of the sixties were still viewed as gods. The record companies were few and they were all-powerful, totally dominating the artist in every aspect of his recording career, from the kind of contract that was offered, to what kind of material he should play. However, with the advent of the Beatles, this attitude was starting to break down.

Before the sixties, all but the greatest artists received session fees rather than royalties. This archaic attitude came to an end by the early sixties, but although artists were paid royalties, they were tiny compared with the royalties they are able to command today. The average deal at this time gave the artist no more than three to five percentage points on the wholesale price of the record, which was a pittance, but a lot more than a mere session fee.

On our first meeting, Jack threw a contract on the table in front of me and said in his slight American drawl, ‘Get the boys to sign this and we’ll make a record.’

There was no negotiating and no advances. We signed our lives away for five years and that was the end of it.

We had a record deal, and an agent who was getting us seven gigs a week – what we needed now was some serious press. Somehow we had to get the name and image of the band across to millions over the whole country. I came to the conclusion that the only way to do that was through a national newspaper.

I contacted Robert Bickford of the Daily Mail and, after a great deal of persuasion, he agreed to do a feature on the band. On 3 April 1964, we rushed to the newspaper stands and gleefully pored over the half-page feature that the Pretty Things had been given. From then on, it went totally crackers. Press, radio, TV – everybody wanted a piece of the action with this hot new band.

But wait a minute, fairy stories don’t really happen, do they? Could it be that within a few short months, this ragged little art student had a band with a record contract and money pouring in? The answer is a resounding ‘No’. Fairy stories do not happen. Some weeks later, Dick and Phil approached me at the Central School with the devastating news, for me at least, that they were now professional musicians whose manager was an art student.

Despite the fact I had helped them get this far, they insisted I should leave the college and take on a partner. They didn’t think, and rightly so, that a manager who was still a student could cut the mustard. They wanted someone who was a professional in the music business, and, by the way, they knew just the person. James Duncan.

Faced with this fait accompli and having no contract with them at this point, I had to accept the inevitable. All I needed was another six months to complete my course, take my NDD, and at least have something to show for four years of studying fine art – a diploma.

At their suggestion, I met Jimmy Duncan a day or so later. He wasn’t my cup of tea, but I had no choice. He was a songwriter of sorts, who had spent the last couple of years living in and around Denmark Street, making La Giaconda café and Regent Sound his home. It now became inevitable for me to make the decision. One of my occupations would have to go. After much soul-searching and deliberation, I took the huge step of leaving Central and becoming a full-time manager.

In the spring of 1964, the first Pretty Things single, ‘Rosalyn’, was released. It had been written by Jimmy and it got to number 41 in the charts. By now, English rock ’n’ roll was in full swing, with the Mersey Sound dominating all. Our time on the road gigging hard had proven to be most worthwhile, as the band had grown quite accustomed to doing up to three forty-five-minute gigs per night in clubs as far apart as the Norique in Seven Sisters Road, and the Star Club in Hamburg, made famous by the Beatles.

I was becoming an expert in the art of publicity and almost daily I arranged stunts and situations with the national press. This was the time when rock ’n’ roll was big news. The exploits of the big bands were always being splashed across every conceivable newspaper and magazine. I quickly learnt that the more outrageous the Pretty Things were, both in their look and style and their total disregard for the conventions of the day, the more the papers loved it. The more mothers told their daughters not to go to the shows, the more they wanted to. The more society said no, the more youth craved it.

Screaming girls, record companies, promoters and press. Everybody wanted a piece of the action. So this was rock ’n’ roll. Next, however, came the Bill Haley factor. I had been observing the Pretty Things at various gigs, and although they were getting a fantastic response from the audience, they never quite tore them apart.

After a gig in Liverpool, they were all in the dressing rooms drinking the by-now traditional rum and coke. I suggested once again that they should try to create mayhem on stage by being completely outrageous and over the top.

‘Showmanship,’ I urged them. ‘In the middle of a number, why doesn’t Viv leave his drum kit and play across the floor to the bass player and then beat out a rhythm on his bass guitar? Phil, you could roll across the floor while you’re singing!’ It was, you see, all planned right down to the last detail. I knew Dick Taylor on lead guitar was immovable. He always stood there like a withering English oak tree lost in his playing and his music.

‘Just try tomorrow,’ I begged.

They did and mayhem not only ensued on the stage, but the audience of two thousand created a near riot. At one point, the security came under such pressure that a number of girls managed to catch the bottom of Phil May’s leg. It was an awe-inspiring sight to see him disappear into this seething chasm, like a sardine being sucked in by a whale. The instant he went in, we all leapt to pull him out, legs and arms flying, and the sight we beheld was unbelievable. In those few seconds in the crowd, he had one trouser leg totally ripped off, his shirt and sweatshirt removed, and he was stripped of his socks and shoes. He became the prince with no clothes.

Having discovered the secret of driving the crowds to a frenzy, after this particular gig we also learnt the need to put up secondary barriers between the stage and the audience, and to double or even triple the number of bouncers. It was game on.

• • •

Jack Baverstock was one of the great British A&R men of the sixties. He had originally worked for New Musical Express and was involved in introducing the Top 20 charts to the UK. In 1958 he had been appointed as the A&R manager for Philips Records’ new Fontana label. At first, they released mainly American easy listening and jazz product, such as ‘Take Five’ by the Dave Brubeck Quartet, but after the success in 1963 of the Beatles and the Mersey Sound, Baverstock started signing up new groups such as the Merseybeats, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, and the Pretty Things, who all scored Top 10 hits in 1964. The label became so successful, with number one hits by the Spencer Davis Group, the Troggs, Manfred Mann, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, and the New Vaudeville Band, that by 1966 the label had a record in the Top 10 almost every week of the year.

After the Pretty Things had a hit with ‘Rosalyn’, Jack Baverstock booked them into the studio for two days to record an album. According to Phil May, their drummer Viv Prince was so out of it that in the first hour he threw up over his drums and fell off his stool twice. Baverstock was so disgusted that he stormed out of the studio, declaring, ‘I’m not working with that bunch of animals!’ Session drummer Bobby Graham was hurriedly brought in as a replacement producer, which turned out to be very fortunate, as he was able to fill in for Prince after the drummer tumbled off his stool for a third and final time and lay there unconscious on the studio floor.