With Cora and I now well ensconced in Hyde Park Place, I decided to take on an A&R man – in other words, an artist and repertoire person. As with most titles, you don’t necessarily get what you’re paying for, and so too with A&R men. The main talent of a successful A&R executive is the ability to pick hits. To hear a piece of music or song and know instantly in his gut that he has found a tune or an act that will become well known and loved worldwide.
Anyone who has these ‘ears’ doesn’t need to work for a record company. Their skills are rarer than moon rock on earth. There are probably no more than ten people in the UK who in the course of twenty years have discovered or have been involved with all the major new talent in this country.
As far as I’ve been able to ascertain over the years, the role of most A&R departments within the major record companies is to release anything that looks or sounds like a potential hit, then wait to see how it does. Witness the fact that every week in this country there are probably in excess of 150 singles released. Of these, maybe three per cent will make the Top 50 in a given week, which leaves ninety-seven per cent of these records basking like jellyfish on the shelves of the distributors or record shops.
Remember, each one of these records, almost without exception, has not only had advances paid, but has cost tens of thousands of pounds to produce; not to mention the money spent on promotion once the record has been released. All of this starts at the A&R man’s desk, and yet for twenty years the same situation has existed. The reason for their existence is simple enough: the profits that are made from international artists, which are huge, more than make up for the losses from the non-selling records. Now a good A&R man could stop this rot, but the trouble is, if he’s that good, why would he want to work for a record company? He could take his talent, sign a couple of artists, make a fortune, and retire to his Caribbean island.
So the quest for my A&R man was going to be extremely difficult. I was going to try to form my own A&R department. These chaps who sign the bands, who approve the finished master, who tell the marketing and distribution departments, as well as the thousands of others employed in a record company, that this record is going to be a hit. A small independent company, such as ours at the time, couldn’t indulge in a three per cent hit rate.
Although I have never studied it in detail, I am sure that our own success rate was to be nearer the thirty to forty per cent mark.
Advertisements were placed in the music press advertising the position, and within a week over two hundred people had applied for the job. I set about interviewing a potential A&R person every twenty minutes. By the middle of the first day, I realised that although they were smart, some had degrees, and they could all talk without effort about the Beatles, the Stones, and the Mamas and the Papas, none of them told me what I didn’t already know; so my line of questioning changed and a new tack was taken.
‘Tell me what I don’t know about the current crop of artists,’ became my opening line. ‘Tell me about yet undiscovered artists, records, and trends.’
This line of interviewing floored most of them within the first minute. A few struggled, but none told me anything new. On the second day, late in the afternoon, I was becoming bored and desperate with the whole thing, when in walked a cocky little bugger, about eighteen years old, by the name of Mark Dean. He had a sallow complexion, with brown curly hair. For the 120th time, and after an introduction, I asked him the same question.
‘Tell me what I don’t know.’
His reply was direct and slightly cocky. ‘That’s a doddle!’
Very cocky actually! By the way, a ‘doddle’ means simply easy, or no problem. He was right. In the next ten minutes, he was to tell me plenty of things that I’d never heard about artists, records, and movements that were churning around ready to personify themselves in the world record market. By the eleventh minute, he had the job and, although he was studying at a local polytechnic, he was prepared to leave and start immediately. His wage was paltry, some twenty pounds a week, but if he delivered there would be lots more to come.
He delivered all right. He found them and I would try to hook them, although, for one reason or another, I couldn’t land them, but for the first time I had someone else with ears to help me.
Within weeks of starting work with me, Deano, as he was known, was chasing such bands as Adam and the Ants, ABC, Spandau Ballet, and Soft Cell. He was always there at the right place at the right time, and his amazing musical taste guided him. This was one guy destined to go far. Within six months, Polygram had offered him a deal as their A&R man with a figure in excess of £50,000 a year.
‘Take the job, Deano,’ I said, ‘and good luck!’
Within another month or two, another company had tripled this offer. Within a year, Mark had become a star in the music business firmament – the boy with the golden touch. Like a bee in spring, he flew from flower to flower, each time drawing more pollen with which to fill his hive.
By 1981, he was at his peak, totally out of control, but loving every minute of it. It was in this same year that he achieved what was probably his crowning glory. Under the auspices of CBS Records, he was given his own label and a huge fund of money to spend on signing and promoting his artists.
Coincidentally, at this same time, I was to go into partnership with an old music business acquaintance of mine, Dick Leahy. He had recently sold out his music company interests and was looking to start something new. I had a great deal of respect for Dick’s abilities. We went back many years, in fact he’d been Jack Baverstock’s assistant and tea boy back in the old days when I signed the Pretty Things to Fontana Records.
We’d more or less cemented the idea of a future partnership a year or two earlier, when we’d decided to go on the relatively new Concorde to New York. In the early days of 1978, it was a dream machine and, from the moment of arrival at the check-in, the very best champagne was poured down your throat by the bottleful.
Before either of us had actually got on the aircraft, we were totally out of our minds, and little more than an hour later, or so it seemed, we were in a large limo careering across the rivet-studded Brooklyn Bridge in New York. It was during this journey to the New World, from centre to centre, that our plans were made to start a new publishing company, Morrison Leahy Music.
So Dick came in with me at 1 Hyde Park Place and we launched our new joint venture. A few months after his arrival, I received a call from young Deano.
‘Got a few minutes, Brysey? Cos I think I got something very exciting to play you, and you would know.’
An hour later he arrived, bouncy and irrepressible. He had a grin from ear to ear and as ever was in a state of perpetual motion.
‘Listen to this, listen to it. I think I’ve cracked it!’
He slid the tape into the deck. I pressed play on the £75 music centre – nothing very grandiose for me. The first two songs were fantastic: special songs, special voice. The third one was the song! Even as a piano demo, it had a class of its own. Lyrics, form and music, this was not just a song, it was destined to become a great Evergreen. These words were written in retrospect, but they are absolutely true. We knew then and there that we were listening to something created by the gods.
The song was a ballad, and its title was ‘Careless Whisper’. Deano and I were ecstatic – we jumped up and down in anticipation.
‘Who are they, Mark? Where did you find them? What’s it all about?’
‘They’re two guys from near where I live. In fact, one of them went to the same school as me. They’re called Wham!’
‘What?’
‘Wham!’ He spelled it out, ‘WHAM! Why don’t I sign them for recording and you sign the publishing?’
Twenty-four hours later, they arrived. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. It’s very easy after the event to say that you knew an artist or sportsman would make it big one day, but with these two it was obvious. They were dressed like dudes with their own style. Full of life, full of youth, unique, original, and special. We had to have this band. Mark had been instrumental in not only bringing Wham! to our attention, but initially in helping us to sign them. To that I owe him my eternal gratitude.
After Mark had left us and before my partnership started with Dick Leahy, I had signed one act in particular who I thought was going to be enormous. The band was Haircut One Hundred and, like Wham!, they were unique, both in Nick Heyward’s songs and the image that they portrayed.
The first single that Haircut released in October 1981 was ‘Favourite Shirts’, which went straight to number 4, and this was followed by ‘Love Plus One’, which achieved the number 3 position. Two other singles, ‘Fantastic Day’ and ‘Nobody’s Fool’, also made the Top 10. Their only album, Pelican West, which came out in February 1982, reached as high as number 2 in the UK Albums Chart and went platinum.
This was a band that could have taken the world by the seat of its pants and become enormous, if it hadn’t been for the usual stupidities and acrimonious behaviour of its members. Songs like ‘Fantastic Day’ and ‘Love Plus One’ flowed from Nick’s pen. A sell-out tour of England was eclipsed by possibly one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen when they played the Odeon Hammersmith in June 1982 at the end of the tour. The audience and I went wild, absolutely wild. I was never more convinced that I had a truly international supergroup on my hands.
They were in the studio recording their second album in July of that year when the farce began. Within days of the record company announcing that a new album by Haircut One Hundred would be out in November, they’d taken an unprecedented 400,000 orders and the group had yet to lay down one track in the studio. Their future seemed huge and assured.
It didn’t start with a kiss, but with a telephone call. It was from one of the band’s representatives.
‘We just want to tell you Bryan, that Nick didn’t write all the songs for the new album. Well, actually he wrote all the songs, but we put passages in here and there and gave him ideas that helped to embellish them, and therefore we want some of his writer’s share.’
‘Oh no. Not that old hot potato.’
You see, there is nothing more horrendous for a band in their position, than seeing a real talent writing great songs two inches from their noses, and making a fortune doing it. This is deemed by the untalented to be unacceptable behaviour, and so the band was now in full cry, like a pack of hounds, trying to cut their pound of flesh from the gilded carcass.
A further week went by, until things started to reach fever pitch, and I was summoned down to Richard Branson’s Manor Studio, near Oxford. They’d been holed up there now for over two weeks, and the murmurings and mutterings were becoming more audible than the tape playbacks. The record company was starting to get the shakes, as the order book was piling up to unprecedented proportions. So, in the second week of August, I arrived at the studio. The tapes in playback told the real story.
The essential ingredient of Haircut’s records was gone. That freshness of sound captured instantly, like Chinese food cooked in a wok, was being eroded through days in the studio spent bickering about who had composed what or who had contributed those three bars that made up part of the song, which would give them some form of authorship, to eventually fill their greedy little palms with silver.
Although things were in a sorry state, I nurtured a hope that common sense would prevail. I spent a whole day cajoling, talking, and telling these idiots how big their future was going to be and the fortunes they were likely to amass. The one common thread to my theme was to ‘leave Nick alone … let him write his great songs’, as they were the source of the band’s success. My pleas, it appeared, fell on deaf ears.
The rot had set in. The lawyers, accountants, and other non-productive acolytes buzzed like flies around a honey pot, but the one man they were isolating was the creative genius whom they needed, Nick Heyward. He eventually cracked and one morning in the middle of a session he came back from the country to my office saying that he could take no more and couldn’t or wouldn’t finish the album.
There was uproar at Arista Records. Although my dear old friend David Simone, who was managing director at the time, was worried, he maintained his normal jocular attitude.
‘What are these fucking idiots up to?’ he asked.
David rarely swore, so this was a major event. The explanation was simple – it was a story as old as the Bible. A story of greed, lust and power – and, like most of these stories, there’s always someone who comes out the loser. Arista would lose, we would lose, but worst of all these seven musicians, who would brook no advice from me, who were on the threshold of their careers, were about to throw it all away.
My message was repeated ad infinitum, ‘There is so much cake to be shared around over the next few years, what does it matter if Nick earns a bit more?’
Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards and others had been encouraged and worshipped for their writing, not penalised for it. Even the looming threat of the dole queue had no effect on their sensibilities. Finally, with no other course of action left, the last throw of the dice was made and a meeting was called.
The meeting was to have very little to do with artistic endeavour. All altruistic considerations were forgotten. The ‘suits’ took over. In more than twenty years in the music business, this meeting was to be the high point in farce.
Gone was the passion of groups of musicians who took to the stage because they loved the blues, or who worshiped Elvis, the Beatles, or the Stones. Gone was the simplicity of picking up some cheap guitars and playing drums on a couple of old saucepans, or washboards. That freedom of expression, the lodestone of this fantastic industry. All of this talent and yet here we were on this spring day in the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater Road and it seemed to have come down to the same old thing: friction and fighting over money.
We met for a late breakfast in a private room. The entire band was there and, to my horror, each one of them was to arrive accompanied by his own myriad assortment of advisers, whether they be accountants, lawyers, or managers. The musicians took up posture more like boxers, with their trainers and managers standing either behind or at their shoulder.
My mind tried to conjure up the words to explain what stood before me. After a minute or two of thought, I found the categories for all of them. We had a posse of lawyers, a pack of minders, and a lament of managers.
As each round of conversation was ticked off, a huddle of repair and advice was given to each of the contestants by their seconds. I was reminded of that wonderful film Zorba the Greek when, on the death of the mistress of the house, the whole village set upon her goods and chattels, like so many locusts with so many hands, grabbing in sheer frenzy, but no one really coming out with anything.
At the end of three hours on that fateful day, all that was left of that potentially great band was a broken record lying shattered and unfinished on a studio floor. Haircut One Hundred were no more. The album that had promised so much lay unfinished, sitting in a large round tin, its destiny never fulfilled. Within months, most of the band was on the dole, or back in the jobs they’d hoped never to see again.
Nick struggled on writing and recording, but it was never to be the same again. Over the years in the music business, I have often wondered what goes on in a man’s mind when, months or years after, the full gravity and stupidity of his decisions become a reality. That imperceptible moment in time when they realise they’ve blown it.
Fortunately for me, the cycle of rock ’n’ roll appears to be constant, and it wasn’t to be too long before that day when Deano telephoned me about another great new band.
It was now my and Dick’s intention to sign Wham! regardless. However, as in most things in life, it wasn’t as straightforward as I might have hoped. George Michael was eighteen years old, but he had a presence and understanding that belied his youth. What was extraordinary about him was that he knew then exactly what he wanted and where he was going. I’ve never in all my years come across an individual who was so resolute in his objectives, so prepared to sacrifice everything, if necessary, for what he regarded to be his destiny.
The negotiations with us were concluded within hours, but the finer points on one or two issues were to take days, which became months, during which the buzz from the duo started to emanate around the village of rock ’n’ roll. Although several record companies had turned them down previously, they were now coming back with substantial offers, in most cases higher than ours. But George wished to sign with us and he was not about to be railroaded, even by higher financial compensation. He wanted our managerial advice, which came with the publishing deal.
Finally, all was settled, but for one crucial point. I’d insisted all along that the songs had to be signed to us for the life of copyright. George didn’t see it this way – it was unusual in the eighties for a publisher to seek life of copyright. Nevertheless, that’s what I wanted. Life of copyright means that each song written by a writer will be owned by the publisher for the natural life of the writer, plus fifty years after his death. This period of time alters from country to country. In America, for example, they currently have a retention of seventy-five years.
This particular point has aroused much contention between publishers, artists, and lawyers in the last few years, with the result that publishers have been throwing in the towel on this emotive issue; for the most part, publishers now accept retention periods from anything between three and ten years. I did not and do not share this view, as it is my belief that although I did not conceive the song, the work and effort that we put into making the song a success gives me the right of part ownership with the writer. I ask you also to remember, dear reader, that ninety-five per cent of the songs written are valueless within a few years of their recording.
It would be wrong of me to suggest that every publisher deserves life of copyright, because frankly most of them don’t, but anybody who really works, promotes and busts a gut for a writer, deserves his just reward. George did not agree and proved to be as intransigent as me. It was during these negotiations that I became aware of the self-purpose and the total belief in his infallibility that any major artist must have.
I remember clearly the final ‘make or break’ day. It began with a meeting in the office of George’s lawyer, Robert Allen, in Covent Garden. The meeting had started at about eleven o’clock, and I was due to play a game of polo in Cowdray Park at four o’clock the same afternoon.
So it started. The bone of contention being the only topic of conversation: life of copyright. George said no, I said it had to be. We talked for hours, neither of us willing to compromise or give an inch, no quarter given nor asked. Time was now running out and for the fiftieth time that morning I beseeched George to give us life of copyright.
‘George, it’s got to be a life of copyright.’
‘No,’ he replied adamantly. ‘I want to retain the copyright.’
Robert Allen was sitting on the far side of the desk, and piled up beside him were rolls of papers, all tied with very neat red ribbons. Every now and then he nodded in acquiescence with one of George’s comments. On several occasions, he interjected along the lines of, ‘You know he’s right, Bryan. No one else would be asking for life of copyright. Why, he could sign three deals right now with more money and five-year retentions.’
That was as maybe, but George wanted to deal with us, and we sure as hell wanted to deal with him. One hour melted into two, and the plastic coffee cups were soon taking on the look of a New York skyline. I looked at my watch. God! It was 2.30 p.m.
‘Chaps, I gotta go. I’m playing polo at four o’clock in Cowdray Park, and I just can’t be late.’
I can imagine the thoughts that crossed both George’s and his lawyer’s mind as this idiot prepared to leave the meeting unconcluded, especially to go and play a game of polo.
‘George, I gotta go. Everything else is agreed. Why don’t you just say yes to life of copyright?’
There was a long pause. He looked in succession at his lawyer, Dick, and me, and said, ‘No. No deal with life of copyright.’
‘Okay,’ I moved towards the door. His lawyer was looking with some deep-rooted fascination at the top of his pen, Dick was sitting back reflecting on the moment, and George was resolute.
‘See you.’ I opened the door and stepped out into the particularly unimpressive hall. I stopped on the top step and thought, you have a writer writing some of the best songs you have ever heard. You’re beaten but not bowed, now go back in there and do a deal.
All that remained now was to get the best terms available, so I turned around, pushed open the door and walked back into the room.
‘George, give us “Careless Whisper” and the first album for life of copyright, and you’ve got a deal.’
Within a second, he’d nodded his agreement and replied, ‘You’ve got a deal.’
With George, when he said ‘Yes’ to something, he always kept his word. One hour and ten minutes later, I was on a polo pony playing at Cowdray Park, certainly not realising how important the day would turn out to be in years to come. Not signing George Michael would have been as bad as Decca turning down the Beatles. So the deal was consummated, and Wham! was launched.
In the early days, although George was the obvious musical talent, Andrew Ridgeley was also a star, besides being an extremely nice person. I personally think that Andrew was an important rock ’n’ roll talent. His problem was always living under the greater star of George Michael. Frankly, performing next to someone of George’s talent will always be difficult, but Andrew went for it and the young gun cracked it.
Today Andrew is a happy and contented man who lives life to the full and is as charming as ever. The history of their success is legendary. In a few short years, the boys from Bushey became international superstars with songs like ‘Young Guns’, the mighty ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Last Christmas’. Then came the Evergreen, a song every music publisher dreams of owning, a tune that has been the most requested in England for over fifteen years, ‘Careless Whisper’.
George was an instinctive songwriter. One of the stories about his writing, which has always amused me, was on returning late one night to Andrew’s house. George reminded him that they had to leave early the next day for a TV show and that he would be round to collect him at nine o’clock or thereabouts. Before going to bed, Andrew wrote a note to his mother saying, ‘Mum, wake me up before you go-go!’ The note was stuck on an upright at the bottom of the stairs,
Next morning, George arrived to pick him up, read the note, and a chord was struck as he glanced at the words on the scrap of paper. Before the car had got three streets away, he had written the song in his head. So works the miracle of genius.
That was in the future. A lot was about to happen before those great heights were scaled. The first major problem came soon after Wham! achieved their first chart success. Mark Dean had been either unwilling or unable to pay the kind of royalties that a major act had come to expect. The bigger they grew, the more apparent became the discrepancy. No amount of discussion between the band and Mark could resolve the situation and it started to become dirty. I tried on several occasions to mediate, but to no avail.
George and Andrew decided that the only recourse they had was to attempt to break Deano’s contract. In the first instance, CBS threw their allegiances behind Mark Dean as they were the mother label behind his company, but eventually and probably shrewdly they decided to throw their weight behind Wham!
During this period, both parties proffered all sorts of deals. One of these happened in the north of England, where Wham! were on an incredibly successful tour. After the gig, the whole entourage of record company, publishers, managers and hangers-on were assembled along a bar in the green room. At one end were Wham! and their friends, at the other Mark Dean and his mates.
A deal was put together between George, Andrew and me, which was to offer Deano three points on every record that Wham! sold, plus giving him an imprint. I walked up the bar to put it to Mark.
At this time, both George and Andrew were very keen that Mark should come out of the whole thing with a good deal, because they actually respected what he’d done for them in the early stages. They offered him a very decent royalty on all records sold, plus label credit on any future records bearing their songs.
Considering Mark’s vulnerable position at the time, this would have been a very favourable outcome for him. It was becoming increasing apparent to the rest of us that unless he took a deal of sorts, he would more than likely end up with nothing. I spent a considerable amount of time explaining to Mark that in situations such as these, there was a time to attack and a time to retreat.
There was also a time to surrender with honour. One that would probably be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to him annually. It seemed to me, and I insisted to Mark, that a fresh flag and a new piece of land was a better duchy than having to lose your entire kingdom. But Mark would not be persuaded, and he continued to sally forth until his eventual demise. Ultimately, he lost the contract, recovering no compensation, and ended up a very sad man.
At about this time, and unbeknown to us, the giant CBS corporation decided to put out an inferior recording of ‘Careless Whisper’ – one that had been recorded by George at the Muscle Shoals Studio in Alabama with the producer Jerry Wexler, some seven months earlier. It was a recording that Dick and I both felt did not have the feeling and charisma deserving of such a classic song. But here was the record company about to release this substandard version. George was horrified, for they were about to ruin one of the world’s great songs. He pleaded with the ‘powers that be’, but to no avail. We too regaled CBS with the same request – again, with no luck.
After many hours’ discussion with George, there appeared to be only one option left to us. It was similar to the one available to the President of the United States. Legend has it that on his desk in the Oval Office there sits a telephone with a red button, and that button can launch a nuclear attack. Always there, never used, but catastrophic if touched. The red button in music publishing is the publisher’s right to veto the record company’s rights.
These rights are invested in a simple piece of paper called a stat note. The publisher has complete power over the use of a song until after its initial release. Up until the point of that first release, the publisher may or may not grant a licence to a record company for a recording. After its release, there is nothing the publisher can do to stop a record company issuing another version of the song, unless there is a material change in lyric or composition.
In reality, publishers are only too pleased to have songs released and, in all my years in the music business, this was to be the first and only time I have used this weapon. With no further options and with the absolute belief they were putting out the wrong version of the song, Dick and I said ‘No deal’. We would not grant them a licence for ‘Careless Whisper’, which was a bit like David fighting Goliath, except in this case we didn’t even have a sling. Goliath roared, because they wanted it so badly. But as with all good fairy tales, in the end the poor little defenceless bugger won out against the giant.
To say that our relationship with CBS deteriorated over the next months would be a gross understatement. However, a year or so later, all was forgiven when the new version of ‘Careless Whisper’ went to number one in virtually every corner of the globe. And so we were brought once again into the firmament of CBS and instead of Goliath smiting David, we broke bread as one, as the Yanks would say.
Mark Dean finally lost Wham! and to the best of my knowledge has spent the last few years working in record companies in England and America. I don’t know if he is still cheeky and bouncy, but my guess would be that I would find him a bit more subdued than I did twenty years ago.
• • •
George Michael always remembered exactly where he was when he first came up with the idea for ‘Careless Whisper’. He was only seventeen and sitting on a bus and as he handed the money over to the bus conductor, he heard a tune in his head, which was the iconic saxophone line in the song. He wrote more of the melody in his head on the bus and then developed the song over the next three months.
In his autobiography, Bare, George Michael described how he wrote the lyrics with his friend Andrew Ridgeley and they were inspired by two girls named Jane and Helen. A year earlier, when he was sixteen, George had been dating both girls for a couple of months, and he felt guilty in case the first girl found out about the second. She never did, but ‘Careless Whisper’ was about what might have happened if she had done. He explained: ‘“Careless Whisper” was us dancing, because we danced a lot, and the idea was – we are dancing … but she knows … and it’s finished.’
Surprisingly, George was dissatisfied with the song. He told the Big Issue in 2009, ‘I’m still a bit puzzled why it’s made such an impression on people … is it because so many people have cheated on their partners?’ He went on, ‘It’s ironic that this song, which has come to define me in some way, should have been written right at the beginning of my career when I was still so young. I was only seventeen and didn’t really know much about anything – and certainly nothing about relationships.’
‘Careless Whisper’ was released as a single in July 1984 and topped the charts in about twenty-five countries, including the UK and the USA, where it was later named Billboard’s number one song of 1985. It went on to sell more than six million copies.