In the summer of 1966, I came across a band called Pink Floyd. I first saw the Floyd perform small gigs at the Marquee Club, in Wardour Street. Looking back through the mists of time, they were quite amateur. Their performances were quite dark, due to a poor light show and no visibility. However, theirs was the first light show I had ever seen, their music was different and they were laid back. I thought I would keep an eye on them, as they were extremely interesting. In December, they started performing at the new UFO club in Tottenham Court Road, which hosted a psychedelic evening on Friday nights. I knew then that this was a band with the potential to be great.
On 24 January 1967, having spent a hell of a lot of time trying to persuade the Floyd’s managers, Peter Jenner and Andrew King of Blackhill Enterprises, to give me a sole agency agreement, they eventually agreed. This meant that I had the exclusive rights to sell every gig that the band played.
Part of my sole agency agreement was to guarantee the Floyd a minimum income, which at the time was a small fortune of £400 a week for a year, so we needed to work really hard to obtain enough money to cover such a large weekly fee. By the end of 1967, we had obtained for the Floyd over two hundred and fifty gigs; prior to my signing them, they had managed only twenty in the previous year.
These gigs took place in venues as diverse as the UFO club and the Rank ballroom circuit. They dreaded the Rank ballroom gigs, principally because the audience wanted to dance to soul acts and groups that they had seen on television. Such is the fate of a new band, and it was here that they learnt their craft, which was essential for the huge concerts of the future.
My first meeting face to face with Pink Floyd had taken place at a recording studio, where they were recording their first single, ‘Arnold Layne’. I arrived with two of my bookers, Tony Howard and Steve O’Rourke, who would later become their manager. We were all smartly suited and booted, and I think the boys thought it was a raid by the Krays. The song was magical and, as the session wore on, I suggested that I could probably get them a really good record deal with EMI, as I had a number of great contacts there.
Sometime before, I’d met a producer called Norman Smith who worked for EMI, and through him I had met Sidney Beecher-Stevens, the head of EMI’s A&R Department. Beecher-Stevens was probably about fifty, although he seemed ancient, and it was to him that I went to try to persuade EMI to sign this amazing new band.
He got it immediately. Sadly, this man, who made one of the major contributions to the British record industry by signing the Floyd, is now long forgotten.
On 28 February 1967, Pink Floyd signed a recording agreement with EMI that I had negotiated. They received the then astronomical figure from a record company for a new signing of £5,000. Advances were rarely, if ever, paid in the sixties. I remember all of us running out of the EMI building in Manchester Square shouting and hollering with sheer delight.
The lead singer and guitarist, the front man of the band, was Syd Barrett. He was a truly remarkable individual. As a young man, Syd was one of those people who seemed to have it all: the looks, the intelligence and, more importantly, the ability to write great songs.
He had the potential to be a great leader of youth. An artist who set out on a trip of discovery that, through his own genius and finally with the mind-boggling drug, LSD, sailed a deep, new channel that inspired, confused, and changed a generation of people. This was referred to as ‘acid’ music, after the hallucinogenic drug that brought colour, self-liberation and a feeling of being able to achieve the impossible. But Syd’s raw and exquisite genius would be destroyed by his overuse of acid and nervous breakdowns.
‘Arnold Layne’ was released as Pink Floyd’s first single in March 1967, reaching number 20 in the charts. Written by Syd, it was, in fact, published by my first music publishing company, Dunmo Music. It was followed in June with ‘See Emily Play’, which hit number 6.
It was after the release of ‘See Emily Play’ that Syd’s deterioration became more apparent. During a recording for Top of The Pops, he found it impossible to stand up, let alone sing, because he was out of his head. After a couple of attempted takes, and much to the dismay of the producer, we had to drag Syd back to the dressing room to try to put some normality back into his life. Almost an impossible task. Eventually, they managed to get a complete run through on the next take, but as far as the band was concerned, the situation could not continue. Syd would have to go.
The band’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, was released in August, but the pressure of Syd being unable to perform gigs or do interviews was beginning to take its toll on the other members of the band. Finally, their bass player, Roger Waters, who had now become the main spokesman for the Floyd, told me that they had taken the precaution of finding another guitarist for the band, that man being David Gilmour.
Slowly Syd stopped functioning as a member of the band and in early 1968 they started gigging without him, with David taking his place. At this time, Jenner and King decided that they wanted to stay with Syd, which left Pink Floyd without a manager. The band then approached me about filling this function, and it was agreed that I would become their manager. Shortly afterwards, principally because of the enormous workload that I was under, managing four bands plus running the agency, I asked Steve O’Rourke to take over the day-to-day organising of the Floyd. Steve went on to become their full-time manager sometime towards the end of 1969.
One of the first problems that confronted me as manager of the Floyd was to find money for them to tour abroad and, in particular, the honey pot of world rock ’n’ roll – America. Raising the money proved to be impossible, until one day I had this wonderful, stupendously marvellous idea. Later I was to realise that only an idiot like me could have dreamt it up. At this time, I was also Pink Floyd’s worldwide music publisher and, with the incredible naivety that has followed me through life, I offered to sell the American rights to the Floyd’s publishing, and to put all the proceeds towards the band and their touring schedule.
A brief explanation is probably prudent at this point. Normally when an artist is signed to a music publishing agreement, the contract covers the world. The publisher will then sub-license the song or songs through other publishers around the world. These sub-publishers duly collect royalties within their territories, which are then repatriated to the original copyright owner, who then pays the writer their share of the income.
So, in Pink Floyd’s case, I effectively split the world in two, making myself owner and sub-publisher for the world bar America. The American publishers accounted to the Floyd direct and, for this extravagant action, I was paid some £20,000, which was then immediately reinvested into major tours of the States.
Strangely, I never received any thanks for this extravagant gesture.
The first tour we did took us all across America, with a number of the gigs being promoted by Bill Graham, who was then the promoter of such names as Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Doors. He promoted Pink Floyd in his two legendary music venues, the Fillmore East and West.
Money was always a problem in these heady days, and travel and accommodation were the two commodities that swallowed most of the cash. On one occasion, we all sat in the car for about thirty minutes, trying to persuade the Floyd’s keyboardist, Rick Wright, that the two or three dollars he had in his pocket were more important to us so that we could pay a road toll, rather than the hamburger he was contemplating buying for lunch.
The tour was a resounding success, but for me, strangely enough, the most important visions that I have retained were not of late nights and rock ’n’ roll, but the beauty and unspoiled tranquillity of Carmel, Yosemite Park, the great Nevada desert, and the Pacific Ocean. Of course, there were many other things that one may care not to remember – the Plaster Casters, for instance.
This was a group of young ladies led by Cynthia Plaster Caster, who used to spend the best part of their time getting into the rooms and beds of unsuspecting rock stars, where they would then perform an operation that involved the mixing of plaster and water, then finding a suitable appendage of which to make a plaster cast. I can only assume that somewhere in California today there are a number of fireplaces bearing these mementos of a bygone era. They actually tried to capture me one night but, being forewarned, I moved rooms and was able to escape being plastered.
Another incident I remember with total recall happened at a gig the Floyd did at the Whisky a Go Go club in LA. During one of my frequent sojourns on the dance floor, some idiot spiked my drink with acid. I spent the next five hours or so believing that I was a giant and taking great care not to tread on people as I left the club and walked down the street.
At about three that morning, absolutely out of my brain, I found myself in one of the A&M studios, singing on the chorus of Joe Cocker’s recording of ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’. Over the years, I’ve listened to this wonderful song, but I never did ascertain if my vocal refrain had been captured for posterity.
For me, the most devastating decision I made on this particular tour was when I was invited by Ike Turner to have dinner with Elvis Presley at his home in Memphis. I had first brought Ike and Tina Turner to England on a tour a year or so earlier and I published some of their earlier songs. Presley had been watching and listening to Pink Floyd and when Ike mentioned that he knew their manager, he asked Ike to invite me along. In my total stupidity, I turned him down, the reason being a beautiful, long-haired blonde with powerful blue eyes, who had already invited me to dinner on the same night. This was without doubt the worst decision that I ever made and regretted most in my musical career.
In June 1968, Pink Floyd’s second album, A Saucerful of Secrets, was released, and though this was not one of their biggest sellers, for me it was the first true Pink Floyd classic. This was followed in December by the release of their third single, ‘Point Me at the Sky’. I still think that Saucerful is one of the Floyd albums that they will be long remembered for. It was a unique first, even though Dark Side of the Moon was a much bigger record in terms of sales and exposure.
In late 1968, I was approached by the French film producer Barbet Schroeder, from a French company called Les Films du Losange, who wanted to commission the Floyd to record the soundtrack to his new film, More. The film wasn’t particularly successful in England, but in France it played to ecstatic audiences, who almost broke down the cinema doors to get in to watch it, and it has remained a cult movie there ever since. By now, the Floyd were becoming a major talent, and were moving from ‘underground’ to ‘overground’.
My management of the Floyd was to cease, or rather was to come to an abrupt stop, on the night of 26 June 1969. It had become obvious that the band, who were now working continuously building an ever-bigger fan base, needed the next step up. They had to do a major concert, as opposed to the club circuit, but it was a gamble, because the kind of place they needed to play had to be a big capacity venue.
Undoubtedly the most prestigious London venue then and now is the Royal Albert Hall. This beautiful building, inspired I am sure by the Colosseum in Rome, was to be the springboard for the band to put them well and truly on the map. However, there were no promoters around who believed the Floyd could sell out such a large venue, the capacity being in the region of five thousand, so it fell to yours truly to take the plunge. The booking fee was the staggering amount of £350. It sounds such a paltry sum today – but back then it was a fair amount of money.
What happened next was quite incredible. Within hours of the tickets going on sale, the ‘house full’ sign was put up; we literally sold out in a little over two hours. It was to be my first and last concert promoting the Floyd. The concert was a tremendous success; the press and the audience all went potty for this new phenomenon.
Having talked to a few of the press and media boys at the end of the gig, I walked into the dressing room, and everybody was euphoric; we all knew what huge strides had been made that night. After ten minutes of conversation with the boys, Roger Waters asked me to step outside for a minute, as he wanted to talk to me about something urgent. Roger’s first words were those spoken so many times in the world of rock ’n’ roll: ‘Bryan, you’re fired. You are not our manager anymore.’
I would like to say I was gobsmacked; however, with Roger Waters, nothing really surprised me. Having just promoted their most important gig ever, I would have hoped that he could have gone to bed, had some bacon and eggs in the morning, come to see me in the afternoon, thanked me for the last couple of years, then doubly thanked me for putting on the gig that was the precursor for ever more extravagant events in the years ahead.
But no, he just spat out, ‘You’re fired.’
I was hardly surprised, therefore, when many years later the same Roger Waters decided that Pink Floyd should be no more, much to the chagrin of Rick, Dave and Nick, but fortunately for all of us they won their court case to keep the band’s name, and he lost.
The pity of it is that I was within months of passing my management of the band to Steve O’Rourke anyway, as I will explain in a later chapter.
In late 1972, I received a call from Steve O’Rourke, who was now the manager of Pink Floyd. He wanted to see me about my ongoing publishing agreement with Dave Gilmour, who at this point was still under contract to me. Under the terms of this agreement, he owed me only one more song. Steve’s request was quite simple. Would I sell Pink Floyd the rights to this song, as they shortly had a new album coming out and they wanted to put all of the publishing into their new company, Pink Floyd Music Publishing.
My reply was equally simple. ‘No’, or should I say, ‘No thanks.’ I had been brought up as a publisher never to sell a copyright.
‘Come on, Brysey, name your price,’ retorted Steve. I was adamant, however, that the copyright was not for sale.
Over the course of the next few weeks Steve must have phoned four or five times, each time suggesting that I name my price. Eventually I thought, why not, if the deal was right, let’s do it, so I sat down to work out some figures. The previous Floyd album had sold a few hundred thousand copies. The Beatles at this point had barely sold a couple of million of a single album, so I came up with what I thought was an unimaginable figure.
I would sell the song based on an album sale of three million copies. Tongue in cheek, I let Steve know what I wanted, confident in the fact that he would not agree to my price, but if he did, it would be a nice little earner, or should I say, a large earner. I couldn’t imagine any album at that time selling in such vast quantities.
My next questions were to ask when the album was coming out, and what its title would be. ‘February or March 1973 and it’s called The Dark Side of The Moon,’ was his reply.
‘Great. I hope it’s successful.’
The paperwork done, I sat down and laughed all the way to the bank, figuratively speaking. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the years, Dark Side has been on the American charts for more than seven hundred weeks, longer than any other album, and at the last count had sold over thirty million copies.
In retrospect, Steve did a fantastic deal, and old clever clogs here missed out on one of the biggest albums ever. I look back on this today and it still brings a smile to my face. I may not have seen the money, but relating the story still makes me laugh.
• • •
The worldwide sales of The Dark Side of the Moon have now reached more than 45 million copies and by January 2019 the album had amassed a total of 940 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart.
The album made millionaires of the four band members, but not everyone involved in the recording was so lucky. Abbey Road staff engineer Alan Parsons received a Grammy Award nomination for his innovative recording techniques on The Dark Side of the Moon, but he was paid only a wage of £35 a week while he worked on the album. Fortunately, he went on to have a successful career as a recording artist with The Alan Parsons Project.
The singer and songwriter Clare Torry, who sang the extraordinary improvised vocal on ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’, was paid a session fee of just £30 for her contribution. In 2004, however, she sued EMI and Pink Floyd for fifty per cent of the songwriting royalties from the track, claiming co-authorship of the composition with Rick Wright. In her book, Music: The Business, the media lawyer Ann Harrison discloses how the case was finally settled out of court for what is rumoured to be a substantial cash payment and the song is now credited on all post-2005 pressings to both Wright and Torry.