Simon Napier-Bell

It was good, but we had we kept a place in Thailand, and eventually, eventually, whenever there was any free time, I'd be in Thailand because it's warmer or pleasant, nicer, And and then you'd have a holiday and you said we'd better go to England to make sure the place is okay. And you think that's not no longer to start a place as the liability, you know, So we got rid of that, and I would say, I'm here three months a year. I mean, I just got back

yesterday from Indonesia. Five days week after next to be back in London making films. I'm traveling the whole time, okay.

a long time. I have a show running in Las Vegas who's been going for ten years, Raging the Rockcord. So I look in to make sure it's going. Okay. Well I know it's going okay. I don't look into make sure it's going. I looking because I like looking in and to remind them I exist. Forget it, but I'm part of it. And China, well that was a lot before COVID. It faded away. It's just beginning to come back again now.

I was eighteen, nineteen twenty out. We press a position and I get a up and hitchhiked around America. And I was brought up in an upper meddy class English family, but my father had been a member of the Communist Party. This is the diverse peculiarity you get in the upper middle class in British. He went to Oxford University and joined the Communist Party. He wanted to fight for the underdog. So I was brought up to the upper middle class, left wing, very left wing, atheist, very much part of

my culture. Not to believe I was color prejudice. I preferred duck skinned people. I preferred anybody who could possibly be prejudiced against. You know, they would immediately go up in my estimation. I'd feel safe, for more comfortable with people who were not white, middle class. They were people I was uncomfortable with. And I went to America and I was I'd been pre trained to not like Republican Christians. This is the essence of what was wrong with America.

And I hit track around America, and everywhere I went, I'd find really kind, nice, generous, humorous, well educated people who would invite me home for the weekend and say, oh, why you hitchhiking? Come home, spent a couple of days of the family. And there were always white Republican Christians, the nicest you can be. And I hated that because it maybe have to think new things too complicated.

think it's incredible. A man who should probably be in an old people's home, probably is a criminal, may not be, that's probably mentally disadvantage in his entire life. That don't mean recently it could be president and then having men PRIs that you'd wanted president again, it's it doesn't it doesn't. It doesn't bode well for America in general or for

the world in general. And Americans failed to understand that you you it's not your matter in taking a leadership you you are in a leadership position, whether you want it or not. So it's very difficult for the rest of the world to respect America when when fifty percent may vor for Trump, hopefully not three weeks, we will go back to respecting them because you'll come to your senses.

saying half the people in England behalf below average intelligence. Well, half the people in Britain do have a low average intelligence, as they do everywhere else in the world, and it's always a pity when they can be swayed and rerex It was just an insane thing to do, utterly, totally insane, and pretty even the people who voted for it now pretty well know it was and slowly, slowly will edge back into being part of Europe.

this DJ, he's wired. We're in a word to each other. I've got to go and thank him. So I got up to go for a pe. As I got up to go to be I looked across to the DJ, who I was going to go across and thank him for having such exquisite taste, and it was a covers band. Now I was a bit pissed. I'm sure, Champagne, but you are meant to know the difference between covers and records, especially if you've been in the business or in your life. So when I got back and sat down, I pondered

on this. It was one of those incredibly clever Filipino bands. You can play hugely loud feedback at just incredibly quiet levels, and you know that they know they know how to do all these things. And I sat down and I thought, do you know what's missing in the world is great? It's two hours of all your favorite rock played by the greatest rock positions in the world. It's just never been done. There are tribute bands, but they're not the

greatest rock positions. And so I got this idea. We would have a show where every one of the greatest rock positions who are not that minute on tour would their band would form a band. And we have fifty musicians and they are all top positions from top groups, and tenor and leven are in the band at any one time. You know, if we had Doug old Ritch are a long time White State would go on tour.

So Doug would have to go on tour, and Tracy Gunns would come in and traveling McDonald on base and Jovia go on tour, and so we have this absolutely incredible, top notch rock group playing everybody's favorite rocksms, including theirs. Because this was the interesting thing to begin with, I thought they won't want to do this, and then they took Tracy guns who took me aside one and said, I've You've given me a chance to play all the

songs I ever wanted to play. He said, if you're a La Guns or White Snake, you can't go play any Rolling Stone songs. You know you don't want to let you. But my favorite songs too, like there everybody else's and now we can play them. And so it's amazing two hours every night of everybody's favorite music played as well as it can be possibly played. And we often have visiting rock stars. You're come in and listen them, they're amazed.

million in the reserved or the show in Vegas. You can't sell any tickets the first six months, and we said, yeah we will, We've got this amazing show over the company. What we had is, you can't because everybody books their holiday in Vegas six months ahead, and they booked the tickets for the shows they're going to see. So when they get to Vegas, even if they want to see your show, they're already booked up with other tickets. So

your first six months are horrific. You've got to fill the show because if you don't fill it, everybody knows it's a failure. And to fill it you have to pay. It's not like giving away ten seats a night. You're giving away eight hundred seats a night and you want people to fill them. So you end up paying a corporation companies who do this, This is how they make their money. They'll fill your seats for you, and so

you pay for those seats to be filled. So for at the end of six months, we had a good big debt, a couple of million dollars debt, the amount of money we were told we should have had to start with. But bit by bit by bit, it's been ten years now it's come round to being a very very successful shodow and the debts got paid off and it's making money and it's full every night.

rock fans strength lot. So everybody makes different deals for different reasons. But basically, you are going to have to find your own way of making a profit out of the show from the room they give you.

in Vegas at some stage. But Vegas isn't good on studying country music, and we are going to Raiding the Latin Vault, which we've had a great demand for. So we may do two shows in the same venue, alternating nights. So we may have two different venues doing two different shows.

liable for UK tax on that. But a lot of money I owned the UK because I have a corporation in the UK. That's really the biggest source of income. I didn't when I first moved here. I thought I have a corporation here and keep on my income out of the UK, but it's difficult. People want to work with the UK company. It's comfortable. Bank transfers go through easily, and so in many ways, I don't really have much tax money from being here. I'm pretty much paying UK tax,

but it's my choice. And if I do want to make independent financial deals here with myself as a consultant, when I work as a consultant, which I do quite often, I get that paid directly to Thailand and then I don't have to pay tax in the UK. If I bring too much into Thailand, I would then have to pay tax on that. But I have the advantage that I'm old, and therefore Thailand sees me. It gives me. I live here on a retirement visa, not at work visa, and they want retired people to bring money in, so

they don't question much what money I'm bringing. I'm retired, That's what they like. Old rich retired people bring in money.

Now there's rather started to say let's forget Chinese market for the moment, but you can't. It's vast. I mean, the Chinese market alone will pay for your film. And it's more looking the other way around. Can we fathom what the Chinese really want from the American market? And you know, if the economies are so huge and so hopelessly interweld, it's ridiculous to think of Chinese as an enemy.

I know, it's the American way. You know, you're either you're other part of us, or we're fighting with you. But and there's it's always extraordinary in that you read about the animosity between two countries, and you know the violent disagreement about this and that, And also you're going to find there are committees and people working between the two countries very amicably and sensibly at exactly the same time. And there's no doubt at all in my mind, I

don't have any fear at all. And there's been some ultimate American Chinese conflict. You're intertwined enough with each other in all in every aspect of all industries, manufacturing industries, but essentially more important anything in the entertainment industry, that you have to stay involved. And if you're intertwined in the entertainment industry. You have a cross culturalization going on the whole time. You understand each other better and better. And I would say, you know, I still go to

China quite a lot, and it's increasing. Again. The problems are over Chinese young people, even though they're pretty well prevented from accessing Google and all the American ways of finding out what's going on, they're very offa with what's going on in America. They understand American culture very much better than American kids understand Asian culture.

just a set of Japanese. You have Chinese, and we're permanently frightened. Told we ought to be frightened because they could suddenly turn off every car or you know, they have a switch where they could make all the cars drive off cliffs or die or whatever. But that's science fiction and stuff, because you know that this sort of this sort of communal every time you see people believe that a huge number of people can get together secretly

and do something. You know, it's about anyone who's managed a group. You know, you can't get five people degree to do one thing. You don't get hundreds of people around the world to do something dastardly deed, all at once in total secret. So I doubt very much that we have much to fear from Chinese cars other than competition to the current industry, that's for sure.

that would say how many want to be managers? And ten five ten, and I SI, you're wasting your time sitting here. Even listening to me today is a waste of time. You just get up or leave this room and find someone to manage. Doesn't matter who they are, they can be the worst, most untalented person. Ever. You won't learn anything about management until you start managing somebody. You find out that it's a relationship between two people. A great manager with a great artist might move on

to find he never manages a good artist again. And you manage. It's a relationship. It has to work, and you have to learn how to do how to have that relationship with somebody. There's nothing a manager has to do in terms of the business for his artist which somebody else couldn't do for you. If you're a manager and you don't know this, you don't but that you may need to consult a lawyer or a publisher, an

expert in it. But that's what managements about. Management isn't about knowing it, and management is about having the relationship with the artist and taking from the artists the pressure of dealing with an industry. And the sooner you start doing it, the sooner you'll learn about it. And there's nothing you learn about getting on with somebody other than being with that person and finding out about it. So first of all, go and find someone to manage good or bad.

to get out of this until they leave you. And so anytime an actor's left me for whatever I lose. By them leaving me, I gain freedom. So it's never bothered me any actors left me if thought, oh how lovely. Now along with lovely, there's lots of income, loss of precision, all those things. You have to balance them. But this is me, it's not everybody else. And I do know managers who are who go to great lengths to try

to make sure their groups can't leave them. By intertwining their earnings together with the manager's earnings, that becomes difficult to extract one from the other. By well, the classic rock and roll one was to get hooked on drugs, which you supply. That's a very tall true one. Nowadays, it'd be more like to be a business involvement. Each person's different. I just feel that if a group wants to leave you, then you're not going to be able

to manage them. You know that the management contract can't be held in law. I mean it's a personal services agreement. Any personal services agreement can be broken. If you can just establish their relationships, you can super damages. But if you can establish the relationship is broken, you can walk out out of a manager contract. Private side can walk out of the other and then just super adapt for damages the money which would have been earned that keep

the thing going. If you want to keep it going, just make sure you keep it going. You know. Managers start usually is almost saying the fingali sort of way the artist comes to them and worship, saying, oh God, this guy's wonderful. He's going to help you with this and that, and he knows so much, and he's introducing me to people, and he's getting me doers. He's making money. But in the end of two or three years, the manager will be a little more of the tea boy.

He may present to himself as something else. But as the artist grows and makes money, and if he's been well looked after by the manager and has good income, the familiarity grows and the lack of necessity of that manager grows. You know, the key, absolutely important thing a manager does in their artist's life is break them. And once the artist has broken, they can pretty well get

by without managers. They can hire key people, booking agents and accountants, business advisors of all sorts, not have to pay a percentage to sort of just pay the fees required by those people. I'd only enjoy management at that level. Every time I've broken a group, and to the very top, I become bored because the fun is the challenge to how you take this group into the industry, make the industry work for the group, make the group successful. When

was excellent? Example once once they're the biggest group in the world. What are you doing, You're just you're just maintaining something. It's it's the difference between building a car and driving a car. I like building them.

He made us nasty joke yesterday. He farted when im golfriend was present, some stupid little thing. Just get rid of my I hate him. And the lawyer says, well, you can't get rid of the marriage because he farted. You know you fart too. Think of something. Oh, I'll say he was rude to my mother. That's not right. Say he stole some money. Oh okay, we're saying sells some money. And so the lawyer makes up some incredible, terrible thing, because that's the lawyer's job to get the

artist out of the management contract. And the letter comes and that insenses the manager. This is a complete lie. I didn't do that. So he goes to his lawyer. Within two days, during a conflict which will never be resolved, you now hate each other, and the lawyers are very actress. You continue to hate each other because there any money from you. If you don't have a contract, they don't have to do that. They just say you're fired and they go home to bed. But next day they wake

up and think it's a bit difficult about Simon. I'll call them up and see if I can make up. So they call up and you say, sorry about last night. That's okay, no contract, no conflict.

agreement looking email the exchange. If you leave you I'll take ten percent of our half the commission for the next year. Thing I've fixed and I said, don't pay you. They don't pay you. You know when people cheat me, I don't go to court. I just say, is somebody, don't do it again the rest of your life. There's other things you can do.

it isn't the immediate attraction musically. It's something more complex than that. And often it's not not an immediate traction in personality. I mean, if there's ammsia, dislike or revulsion insary, it's not going to not going to work. But if someone is a bit cool, a bit bland, a bit uninteresting. But the project looks good, the music looks good. It's worth getting to know that there are very few people

who really are uninteresting. I mean, you know, if anywhere in the world you get the taxi and talk, you're going to find something interesting to talk about with anybody. They're always going to have some experience you haven't had. So it's proactive you need to learn. The other thing is no major performing artist ever. I used to say ninety percent, but no, it have never come across it.

Every major performing artist was driven to become that by some sort of trauma, some sort of traveler in their childhood, some sort of angst which happened when they were young. It might be the death of a parent or sibling, or even a pet if they weren't given enough sympathy for it. Or it could be much worse. It could be some sort of child abuse. Something drives them into themselves,

makes them lonely. They didn't get love at a point in their need, didn't get loved to someone they needed it from a point in their life when they needed it, and they were retreating to themselves. Being creative. It sort of helps a permanent, nagging, mental upset in them, and they're desperate for the love of an audience, and that's that's what it's about. And there's no everybody you see who's successful on stage. You go into their past, you look at it, and that happened. I used to say,

it's ninety percent. I've never come across the ten percent I'm allowing. Isn't like that. It's always there once you look at it, and the manager is taking that on. You know, don't think you're going to be a manager and avoid that. That angst to upset and permanently unsettled mental state the artist has is going to be given to you to deal with, and you have to accept it, enjoy having that problem. I suppose, I mean to some degree. I suppose managers who are good must have some aspect

of what analysis has. There must be something in the knownergy's background which which makes them sympathize and understand that where it's not so acute. So perhaps even by being managers, we're giving ourselves some sort of therapy. Possibly I haven't delved into that too much, but it's very likely and the best, the best managers. It's very interesting, you know, you look at Roger who managed, who managed Tina Turner? Roger Davis, Roger Davis man he managed three other major artists.

Everyone has the same background. Do you think Roger Davis doesn't have the same background? I never even looked. Every one of them had divorce spirits. I'm sure Roger Davis had difficult and at least parents who fought. You know that there must be some similarity. The pain or the hurts or the room the results of the pain isn't so acute and the manager, but I'm sure that understanding of that emotional distress must be their managers successful managers.

with it. They enjoy their disabilities. You know, many blind people don't want to be given sights. You know, it's extraordinary for people like us to believe that, but you know, there are people who are deaf who don't want to be given hearing, and people who are blind who don't want the sight to be given to them, and people

live with it. Learn to love their disabilities. We have. Look, we've all got some sort of disability as some sort if you look into yourself and own up with some quirk, something which you makes you a better person if you didn't have it, but you like it. You learn to live with it. And they enjoy their mental distress if you like. They enjoy being able to deal with it. They get medication for the help their bipolarism, but they

take it. They're not very creative, so they don't take it, and then they have creative periods and then they're out of their heads, so they do take it. Yeah, a lot of people stop taking their bipolar medicine to be creative, and then once they've created the basic outline of what they want to do song wise or whatever it is, they go back to taking it so they can now edit it and polish it in a calmer form. The

difficulty for managers. If you really went to work improving the mental health of your artists until they were completely completely boring, they would be completely boring. There would be no music. So I think you're wrong about that. As long as they're still unhappy, they'll still make music. You know, when you creating two artists is like taking an aspirint or something ball stronger than harassment. It is at the moment it soothes the distress.

that nobody wanted to record for her. But this was an artist who went out for one hundred thousand pounds a night, and I'm talking a long time ago. This is huge, huge money. And continue to she could get many many months or years ahead as you wanted. And yet it was quite clear nobody was going to make another record, but a successful record with so we buy. We fall in love with an artist with a certain imagery, a certain moment, a certain pain or aura which surrounds them,

and that's what we want, that's what we like. We're stuck. We don't think of you name anassist to most of them. We think of only only in that period. Very very few transcend it. Some do, some do, at least for life work they do. I mean, we love Mick Jagger

being eighty, it's extraordinary, but we do. I actually like watching Mick Jagger at eighty now that I used to love him when he was twenty five or thirty, but I actually enjoy watching this old man is so utterly brilliant on stage, and Bruce Springsteen the same mid seventies. I like him at that. You're saying, now, can he make a successful record? It's very difficult because that the market which wanted that successful record as a market for the same age as he was when you made it,

and we're not. It's the market which is the problem. We're not receptive to a record by an old man.

And you're going to benefit from you having two or three or four us a'smare contact. But not to go to an opening night, not to go with an a portant event, not to turn up say once every five or six gigs, that's really stupid too. And of course they want to see you there. They're like you, they support you, they feel more confident when you're around. They want to tell you what problems they've had since you

were last around. I think not to go at all is completely foolish, and to go all the time is just it's not a benefit to anyone and it or where you are and it will be an over familiarity they don't want you will end up as a tea boy.

be doing something different, and you make a judgment. Shall I call the next day? Oh that's just too much? Come on, we're together three hundred and sixty five days a year. Surely two days apart will be nice. Enjoy it and how many days do you let that go? It's no difference. It's exactly the same group. And this is the next Really a thing about managing a group is you're managing four or five people and they're completely different.

One person in that group is going to be the real classic artist type we're talking about who's driven the group, who creates a group has got this huge angst hanging over him, who's mentally disturbed, who has driven to be performed because of something that's happened in Chanted. The other three or four may be nothing more than just very good craftsmen who surround him well and give him company, who plays superbly well and wouldn't play so well without

him there. But they're not the same type of personality. And you usually get one person in the group who is an incredibly difficult mona, I mean, who dislikes everything and grumbles. They may not be that important musically, but they might be important glue to the group, and you have to deal with all of them and say you're dealing with their internal conflicts or thinking what's best for each of them. You know, it's not as simple as

go and see the group five people. It may well be talking to each one of them separately, some of them more often than others.

see each other. It's the most casual way to expand your relationship without without you know, being introduced to someone is too is too sincere, too difficult to Now we've got to sit down and talk because he's that man just introduces. We've got to say something meaningful. You know, I don't much like this guy, or maybe I could

like him in other sectences. But lunch, talking across for it, talking across the restaurant, going to table or table, being with the person you're with, it is to me it's a finitive way of growing networks. It's not quick. You can't do it for two weeks and suddenly have a network. But you've done it for fifty years, you end up

knowing an awful lot of people. And I would have thought half of all the people I know in the music industry, I first met somewhere at a meal or a dinner, and I probably wasn't having that dinner with them through somebody I was there. Other people do it by going to music business events, but I don't like music business events. I've often actually said I don't quite mean it, but I do mean it too. I've never

felt part of the music industry. I think what I mean is I often haven't felt part of the music industry. But the music industry is it's very split into two things. Anything I've gone to a record I've said, anything I've gone to a record company, I felt I was visiting the music industry. When I left the record company, I thought I was leaving the music industry. I've always felt that. You know, the music industry is really two, two completely

different sections. So there is the corporate section, and the corporate section would be the majors with Sony and Water and Universal. Probably the collection Society is probably William Morris CIA. And that is they're always like the government. That's that's the civil service, that's the government. They set the rules, this is how they do things. All they're interested in money. Yes, they talk about music. But actually they don't give a

damn about music. They get about money, about making it work, about huge amounts of money generates, and that's that's fine, because that's the money we all need. That's the money that the industry has and generates, and we other creative forty percent can use. So they like the government. And who wants to work for the government. It's not that

you don't need a government. We need a government. We want a government, but there are there are an unelected government unless you choose to wiegle you away and become part of it. And the creative part of the industry is what I love, the scams and the fun and the music. But you know, the music and the scams are equally fun because no major artist has ever been made,

or built or created without scams. The idea that the Rolling Stones would have had hits just with the music, without the imagery and things Andrew who Golden did with them, or the Beatles could have had their hits without the look and their hairstyle and the suits. Every major artist, even the ones you think are the most austere or unscammed, where a combination of image and music. That is how the industry works. And I can't think of any act I've ever seen where the music alone solved the act.

It was always the image with the music, and where you think it wasn't the image, you think again, as it was the lack of obvious flamboyance in the image which made it, or always as a combination.

in my use of we don't belong in corporations. They dominate, they take over, They run corporations in a way which is so flamboyant that they really should have belonged to the forty percent, you know, the water yetnikov or the God. I'd leave us some people that they they're huge personalities

and they didn't need to be corporate. But the bulk of the corporation are corporate, and they're dull, and they depend on salaries, and they're not if they're cast off from that their own functional world and tomorrow function well within the corporation. It's either I find it very difficult to get any joy from being in a corporation. At the same time, I don't dislike them. We use them. And the outside of the managers, the ultimate outside, goes

into the corporation to raid it. I mean, you go in, you have to learn to manipulate it. A half of your artists. And the other interesting fact, of course is whereas managers never join the corporate world, the artists do. The artists sign a contract with the corporate world, agreeing to enter into it, become a part of everything they ostensibly don't like. So the artists get tied into the corporate world and the way the managers don't and compromise

every big artist. The idea that the artists don't compromise, it's absurd. The bigger the artists is, the more they've compromised. Because the artist needs the industry to make them what they are, they're not going to get that audience they need and crave so much without the industry doing it for them. So the artists are the people who compromise. There are many, many great singers and players and musicians who are not big stars because they didn't compromise. So

it's the idea. The artist doesn't compromise, it's disrupt The manager's there to oversee the degree of compromise, to help the decrease the compromise, to keep them away from going too far, and helping them get into it when they don't want to.

were told they could come. Everybody had to go by helicopter because the roads are going to be blocked up to Wembley all day. We had all been a helicopter at ten o'clock in the morning and it would go on till ten in the evening. And I just thought, what an absolute fucking notemare I'm going to be stuck for ten hours with all these people, can't go anywhere, and you're backstage and they're going to be talking rubbish and taking a caine and they'll be ghastly catering. You know,

I'm not. I'm not going there. I want nothing to do with it. So I didn't go. That sort of titrifies because you know, I missed something which is an incredible occasion. I should have been it, but it just looked horrible to me.

the scam and the and the difficulty and that. You know, he was more interested in going out with Mick Jagger every night for a year to persuade him to sign with the label than he was with having him on the label. If you see what I mean. It was the chase, it was the fun. There were more stories revolving around the army was what's that wonderful story when arm it one night and he calls up Mick and says, Mick, I'm going to a party and mix it up. But he'll come on, Mick, come to a party with me,

and so mix it okay? Is this after midnight? I'll go to a party with you. There isn't a party, so it's got to creative party, you know. So he calls up Share and Shares and says, Share, we're going to come around and see you. And Shares just started an affair with with with David. What's not God? Wasn't it gay? David? Please tell me the the.

just got into bed, and Army says. Arvid says to David, uh get the champagne out, And David said, we hadn't got there, and hit says, well, we never had that problem where Sonny was here? Is there a sums up Arbit?

You know, he was out every night all night and what he what he liked when anything else was being able to walk into a corporate meeting at Warners at nine in the morning or nine thirty in the morning, a big meeting something you know, the monthly really important meeting, and he'd been out all night drinking, drugging, listen to music, dancing, and he could walk in and be as sharp and as effective as all the others he enjoyed. He enjoyed that more than anything else.

I was brought up, you know. I went to the film Inustry when I was eighteen, and to everybody in the film store, I was working with the Jewish. So all day you were hearing Yiddish and Jewish jokes and

Jewish humor. And it seemed to me the way music show business should be rung, you know, So I like that, so very felt very comfortable around around Walter, and because he's spent a long time with Alan Grabman, who was another another person saying they'd spend hours on the found together just just talking bullshit together, swearing and just saying. And he talked in that he talked in a way it wasn't really him, which so many people in that position to, you know. He said, yeah, we got to

fuck the artists. We've got you know, we fucked the artists before they fuck us. We've got to get this go that. And of course he wasn't inside. He wasn't like that at all. He loved artists. It was just marcho businessman talk, but he was. He did get mad. He out of control for years. I'm like, go to New York and have a meeting, and after as I go upstairs and see his water around there, said yeah,

go and just walk in and see water. And he'd be putting cocaine in his vodka and it's only eleven in the morning, and he'd sit there and say, who can I know? You know, who can I and who can I call up? Bloody David Gef And I don't like that. I got to call him out. He him called people up and just say things out of the blue to absolutely infuriate them. You know, David, we were pulling the record. We're not putting it out. You know. He held the phone out. Let me hear David explain,

and he said, as okay, we'll put it out. He had he was a wicked schoolboy, he really was.

to be parents. So I don't be in that in a bad way. It's a wonderful work. There was no costting, there was no over control, and two or three I look back and think, this really couldn't be possible. It was possible because it had to be that year, because it was in that place, which meant it was ninety forty two or forty three. I could go out by myself and go for walks at two or three years old, and my mother tells stories about how it would come

to this. We were staying in a boarding house. You know, boarding houses, Lunch is one till one point thirty. If you're not there, there's no lunch, and this is wartime. If you don't eat lunch, there's no food, el sweat, that's it. You know, they've got rations. And it come to one o'clock and I wasn't there, and she'd run outside to see where I was, and she couldn't find me.

She'd run down the road around and then she would get to the beach, which was ten minutes away, and I'd be sitting on the further out rock, sitting gazing out and see dreaming. You know, couldn't have been more than three years old. This is acceptable in those days. Parents allowed their children to wander off and fend for themselves. So I was doing that by three or four. You can imagine how independent I was for the time I was five or six. They gave me a when the

war was over. I think it was my sixth birthday. I was given a bicycle for my birthday and I cycled to school and at weekends I could go out all day at six years old. So after breakfast I'd take the bike as long as I was back by six o'clock in the evening, so I had ten hours. So I worked out how far I could cycle in five hours, and I go there. I'd be given a sandwich when I got there and eat my sandwich and

cycle back again and so over the next year. The time I was six or seven, I've been everywhere around London where you could cycle in five hours and seven years old eight years old doing this nowadays prison. I think parents would go to prison for allowing that to happen. There was a very funny situation when I was I think I was eight, and I really wanted to go further.

I was bored with the five out limit, and one day I just started out cycled Waxford, which is well over the limit, and I didn't get there to four in the afternoon. It was really going to be in trouble, and so I went to the local police station and I walked in very sweet, and I was eight year old boy pushing his bike and said, excuse me, I've

been a very naughty boy. And the policeman looked at what have you done, sonny, And I said, well, I'm allowed to go cycle five hours and I've become too far and it's four o'clock and I can't get home. And he said, oh, well, my colleague is driving down to London half an hour. He'll take you. And they put the bike in the truck of the car and they drove me down and then he stopped at the end of my road so my parents wouldn't see the police car. I'd be home by six o'clock. That's coercion.

Everybody loved little kids in those days. There was no There was no feeling that I needed, but protection left people get out and live their lives. By eleven or twelve, I was going to jazz clubs in London and allowed to go.

And on Saturdays there were weddings, and if you were in the choir for the wedding, you could get a shilling. And I was quite good, and I got to sing the solo one week, and for singing the solo at the wedding, you've got two shots, and they gave me six months tips. So I want to put it in new money because it's still in his sense, but it's quite good money then. And I remember one time, so I sang this out as well. So let me sing the sellar. So now I was thinking weddings. There was

the there's two weddings on a Saturday. You had to go to the Sunday service to be allowed to do the wedding. So it was an hour and Sunday at the service for a penny, and then two weddings of a Sunday for four shillings, and then you get a little bit tips, so five shillings. This is good money. This is double what most kids would get for pocket money. And then one day I had a cold and the choir master was very strict. If you had a cold, you must tell him and you you wouldn't be allowed

to sing. Everybody get the cold. And I didn't tell him, and the solo sang it was the Lord's My Shepherd, the Stanford version, which ends on a high note. Little chorus to boy goes up to this very high note, and I got my voice cracked with then some network pulled off the high note despite the crack, and everything's finished beautiful, and no mag the young couple getting married, you know, thought, oh God, a beautiful solo at our wedding's going to be terrible, and then no, it wasn't.

It was beautiful. I finished with the lovely note, and they gave me five shillings tip. That's a double a whole week's pocket and just for the tip. So every time I sang the solo in Future, I always cracked on the last note and then brought it right. So I made a lot of money and then my voice broke, So that was the end of that.

I went to a very prosh private prep school and then after a year the money ran out, so I was sent to the local government school, which was horrific for me. It was horrific, and I ride with the wrong accent, because accents in England at everything, you know, way more important than America. So they said, you know, what's your what's your name? And I said that Napier Bell.

And that was after the toilet with me head down, the toilet kicked my ass flash of the toilet until I could so I was not your bell, Simon, not your bell. But then everything's all right then for a while. And then my dad made some more money and they decided I ought to go to a private school again because my education was getting had so arrived at the private school and they say, what's your name? I said, Simon, not your bell, and back off the toilet. You know,

posh kids is just as nasty naster kids. And very soon I'd managed to become Simon Napier Bell. Okay, so you change your accent all the time. So the time I got to public school, I'd done that four times. Public school being of course private school, the boarding school, and so I'd learned to fit in. So I was never liked or disliked. I was not aware of friends being naturally friends in the most cases, just you knew how to I knew how to avoid having my butt kicked.

And that's sort of about being nice to people but not really liking them. And I think I didn't have much of who I liked or disliked it. There's just who might kick my butt and who wouldn't you know, and then the ones who would how to avoid them, making them do it and make them like the actual friends. I probably only had two of three that I said were real friends, and we're still friends after school when I left, And I guess sure surely set me in

a good stead for being a manager. You know where you've got to give the absolute middle ground between the record company, which is rapacious corporate money making and the artist who sort of wants to have a more delicate sensitivity and create music was excellent training. The best managers all seemed to come from some sort of training in being middle ground. I mean, being gay too, is something where you learn to present to faces just for your

own security. And or Miles Copeland, who is wonderful background because his dad was the guy who invented CIA and you said all over the world. So Miles every single year found himself at a new school and a new country with a language, and so he was so good at making sure kids accepted him and you could get in without getting hurt. It turned out to be a brilliant manager.

it was horrible, sentimental, gimmicky music. And I hated it, but sort of like music, and I didn't know what to like. And then someone turned me onto jazz, and I can the same time I was given this trumpet, so I completely fell in love with jazz, which was then trad jazz. So you know Larry Louis Armstrong hot five what seven classic jazz records, And then at that stage in England, there was a big boost in traditional jazz.

There were amongst all this terrible American style sentimental pop and its English cover versions, there were three jazz mans who were doing very well in the popular music Chris Barbera aka Built and Kenny Ball three Bees. And I like that. I like jazz and kids, if they liked music at all, really that's what they liked, because the sentimental music wasn't for them. But there was no There was no music amongst teenagers and those. It wasn't something

teenagers felt. A part of music was that for adults, apart perhaps from the trad jazz. So I fell in love with that. I learned everything was to learn about jazz. Dozens of jazz records and books, and I read more than anything else. I probably read as much as I listened. I just loved the books on jazz. I had every book there wasn't jazz, and I could tell you anything. I mean I can't remember anything now that I could

tell you know what? What? What? What? The engineer at the session when Louis Orstone's Hot five recorded this that I was wearing and knew all about it. And then bit by bit got to like modern jazz and liked it even better and completely passionate about modern jazz. So by the time I left school, my idea was to be a jazz musician. I figured to be a jazz position, that I had to come to America. Somehow I get to America as the first problem, and then I had

to become black. I wasn't sure how I was going to do that, but you know, I had this idea, and I was a good teenage idea. I was going to America. I was going to come a top black jazz position. Then I got to America, it wasn't so easy. I couldn't actually work in America, so I had to go work in Canada because we couldn't get a green

card in America for that. But I managed to emigrate to Canada, and I used to come every weekend come down to New York if I when I was in Toronto and listened to jazz and jazz pubs in New York, and it was my whole world was obsessed with jazz. And I had found the sad truth that to earn a living as a trumpet player or any other musician, it wasn't jazz. They didn't earn the living there that even the great jazz editions I'd worshiped and had their records in my room. While as a kids, most of

them that was a hobby. Most learned their money playing in other bands, apart from very few, and so I worked in a dockside tabn much like the Beatles didn't have it. I worked in a strip club, and I learned all the pop songs of the day because that's what had to be played. And then this was an extraordinary thing. Ten years had passed since I first introduced

at pop and how bad it was. I learned that the pop songs of the day, now we're talking nineteen sixty were very good, very well constructed, very interesting songs. You listened to Frank Sinartis type someone kind of fly with Me, you listen to Fat's Domino bluesy, jazzy influenced, and I rather fell in love with pop.

even the film in the magazine camera. And I've worked a bit the cutting rooms with him. So I went back to England and managed to get a job in the film industry as an assistant film editor. And that was good because it was well paid and it put me amongst affable, nice, intellectual thinking people.

were big bands. I mean there were probably thirty or forty quite well known big bands, twelve to fifteen musicians, trumpet, brass, sack section touring round UK, and one of the best known Wasjohnny Dank, which was the most jazz influence band, and I'd got a job as band boy, which is roady. But they had a tour manager and a band boy. See he had infected one roady at one tour manager

and you did all the hard work. You carried the drums up three flights of stairs to a flat no empire, and you set them up on stage and packed it to when the bus rolled the joints. So what I'd loved about that job, and they were never I was hopefully they're going to let me play trumpet in the band. Of course that didn't happen. But what I loved about the job was in the bus every night going home, they gossip and the music business gossip, which I really liked.

I thought, this is I want to be part of this. So when I came back and worked in the film industry, I was always thinking how nice it would be to to somehow involve that get involved with that music business gossip i'd heard. And when I started making quite good money in the film industry, I started going to the

trendy clubs. It was middle of swinging London, and I started meeting a lot of music business people and two or three in the morning, I'd have to go home because I had to be up and be in the cutting rooms the next morning. And they'd all stay on, you know. I'd say, how come you even stay on? And they say, oh, the music business, you can go to work when you want. And I thought, that's this is a good business. I'm going to have to get into this. And so I was looking for opportunities and

I've met this girl. We had a hugely good relationship with Vicky Wickham. She was one of the booking agent the booking producers for Already sterdy Go, which was the television teenage program in the UK the music and we have enormous good friends and one day she one day she turned up and said, Dusty Springfield, who was a friend of hers, has just come back from Italy with a with a song she wants to record in English. It's an Italian song and how does she get lyrics

for it? And I said, why don't we write them? And Vicky he said, well, because we've never written lyrics before as well throwing ever bothersly let's do. And so we sat down and wrote the lyrics. Took an hour or two and that was you don't have to say you love me. So suddenly I was sort of in

the music business. The number one hit. And then the Yardbirds, who were the third biggest group in the world after the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, got fed up with their manager because they never made their money or he never gave them any money, and they asked VICKI, who would she recommend to manage them? And she recommended me, And so suddenly I had a call one day saying, this is the Yardbird said, would you like to manage us? Yes? Please.

I love doing things I haven't done before, trying new things. So suddenly, completely in over my head, I was managing the Yardbirds, who've all been in the business five years, were brilliant musicians, had four or five hit records, three number one records, and I was their manager. It's really flying by the city of pants, But I did, you know, sometimes not knowing what you're doing, it's a big advantage. Because they wanted money. That was the first thing I

went out and had done with them. They said, we've got no money, but had four number ones. We haven't got any money at all. We drive around to gigs and this terrible old car and we're all living with our parents still, which is absurd. And so I went off to EMI, which is their record company, and I told them very arrogantly, and I was I was twenty four, twenty five. I was full of myself, quite quite sort

of appity, nasty, nasty, young chap. And I went into EMI and I told them, your contract's not valid with the others because it was made through their manager, and so when they stopped being managed by him, he signed a contract with you, not them, so it's not valid. And I'm not sure if they thought that was right. They talked with their lawyers, but they were sufficiently afraid that I might be right. But they said, well, we're negotiating a new contract. And I had no idea what

do you negotiate? I mean, this is the advantage of not know. I didn't know what the parameters were. If I had done, I have asked a lot, but not beyond the parameters. But I didn't, so I just sort of worked out my head what a records cost, having it? Did they sell? Just take a percentage of that? And I asked for a ridiculous amount of money and a high percentage, way beyond anything they could possibly play and

they paid it. So I got the yard bloods. I mean, it's only twenty five thousand pounds, but they'd only ever paid the Beatles five thousand pounds. And I got a royalty higher than the Beatles royalty because I didn't know, and they didn't know. I didn't know, so they thought, you know, the kid's come in here and get a stirrus. Of course, later on I love they were only giving us an advance on our own pipeline money. It was you learn, but I did well, so the others are

pleased with that. So suddenly I was quite a good manager. But then you know, I made a terrible mistake coming home from a gig from we were in Paris. We were walking back from the gig with Paul sam Smith, who was the base player, and Paul said to me, you know the thing I hate most of the whole I really hate life work. I just can't stand it. I hate traveling, I hate hotels, I hate being on stage, I hate the girls screaming. I hate it. And I

didn't know that. Absolutely the first principal, most important job of manager has is to keep your group together. There's nothing more important. That's the one first golden rule of being a manager keep your group together. I didn't know that rule. So when he said he hated her, I said, oh, you poor chap Pell for doing something you don't like. You know, you should leave. We'll find somebody else. Don't worry, and off he went. So I now I was managing

the third biggest rock group in the world. World was no bass player, and what an idiot I was, Except it worked out all right because I talked to the group and they suggested a guitar player. They knew who I happened to know because I'd been making demos of songs I've been trying to write, and when I use session musicians, I always booked this guitarist and he was called Jimmy Page. But he was a session guitarist. He played pop music. He played on all Herman Simon's records.

He played them the guitar servers you know from pop records. And they all say he's a good guitar guitarist, bring him in, And I said, you know, he is good. And Jeff Beck and him were quite good friends. And Jeff was yardless guitarist, brilliant, the brilliant rock guitarist in Britain, and they all said bring him in and I said, but he won't play bass, and they said, yes he will. He's a good guy. So I went and talked to Jimmy and he said, yeah, I come in. I'll play bass,

but I knew he wouldn't. And the second or third gig in, he walked across the stage and handed his bass to Chris, the rhythm guitarists, and took the Chris's guitar and that was it. Now we had two lead guitarists. And for a while or sometimes I would say, and some nights this was totally brilliant. They stood either side of the stage. There were no mixing desks in those days. What you heard when you went to a gig came

off the stage. You were listed for the amps coming off the stage with no mix And so they stood either side of the station and they played all the solos they already knew Jeff solos from the records. They played them in unison, which gave a stereo effect which you couldn't get any other way than actually have two guitarists because there were no mixing desks, and it was enormously impacted. I mean two they had stature, they knew how to stand and play a guitar, push themselves into

the audience. And I booked them a tour with the Rolling Stones, so the Stones supported by the Yards, and there were many nights on the tour when the Yardbods stole the show. They really had a tremendous force and energy. But at the same time, they weren't happy because, you know, Jimmy was having to play Jeff's solos, so he wasn't his own thing, and Jeff was now sharing the limelight with Jimmy, so they were There were good nights and bad nights, and they got they got less and less

happy with it. And then I got them into a movie blow up which was seen all over the world. And I pulled that off by a stroke of you know, I'm just a blagger. Really, I'm just I talk about scams, but that's how music industry works. I was having dinner one night with my friend Kit Lambert, who managed the Who My Now Who had come up and they were probably the fourth or fifth biggest group, and he was a film but kid had also been in the film industry.

He worked in the cutting rooms and as a director, and I was having dinner one night with him, and he said, Antoni and his town and an Tonieri was just hugely famous Italian film director. And I'd seen all his films because my dad when I was a kid, had maybe go and see all these Italian films. And Kit said, he wants the Who to be in it's a film about Swinging London. He wants the Who to be in the film. And I was jealous. I mean I wanted to go and Santierny. I want my group

to be in the film. And so Kit said that he loves them because he lies to the destroyer equipment. It's kneehelistic and that's going to go with this. Well, how he sees Swinging London's niehelistic image. And so I said to Kit, look that only the Who can do this, So don't undersell. You've got to ask for ten thousand pounds minimum. Remember I was talking about a shilling a week for pocket money. Ten thousand pounds is like asking two hundred three hundred thousand pounds now asked for ten

thousand pounds. And tell him this is your group. You want editing control of that sequence. And Kit was all fired up. He said, I will I will, and he did, and Antoni only just threw him out of the meeting just like that. And I was on the phone. However, Spantoni, only you know what about my group, the Yardards. So I went along to see him with his suite in the Savoy Hotel and I explained that this smashing equipment, which the who did really that was the Yardbirds did that.

The Yarbords did that. Originally they were the absolute masters of smashing equipment. And then who stole it and it became their actor. We thought, oh, well, if they wanted to do it, we've done it for long enough. Now we'll move onto something else. But actually, when it comes to smashing equipment, we really we know, we know that we taught them. And he said, oh, that's that's pretty good. Okay, I'm interested in And he said how about money? I

said money. I said, we don't, we don't want paying you're you know, you're the greatest film direction in the world. Appear in one of your films. We can't ask for money for that. And then he said editing. And I said, editing, you be ashamed to even talk about with you. I saw your films when I was eleven years old, you're the master of filmmaking, and so we got the part, and that was really good for all of the world. Of the Yards were seen as playing in the Marque Club,

being the big group of three another. Okay, how did.

we probably had dinner again the next week. I don't remember if we did, but we certainly never fell out.

and she was one of the ones I auditioned. So she sang beautiful and I had kept her name. And there was a young guy I knew who was about the same age and the same height. He was blonde and a very pretty looking and he danced awfully well. You'd see him in clubs or was around town dancing and moving really really well, very cute. And I thought, if I'd put these two people together, it would be an amazing image. A very blonde, pale skinned guy and

he's just black girl, and they're the same height. They always black brothers and sisters or twins or something and he'd be a very striking image. I knew that image was going to be striking, But what I didn't know is there had never been a mixed race act in England. Ever. There had been black singers who sang with white dance fans, but there had never been a actual mixed race act. It just never occurred to me. I presume they hadn't been in America either, I don't know, but England they hadn't.

And so I put this act together and it was definitely a striking image just because of it. They looked so great and a black and white thing looked and I got a top photographer, I don't know it was, but one of the top photographers to take a beautiful portrait of them, and it was this is absurdity and how you can play games with people. It was naked from the shoulders up, so it was from there, literally from the shoulders up, and there was only flesh to

be seen, but just below there was normal clothes. But what you saw was a black and a white face with shoulders black and white shoulders. And it was a couple of beautiful pictures and I picked the best one, and I had a big four by what the big A five size which is double you know, the big the big size picture twenty eight twenty by sixteen, and I had this blown up, had one hundred of them blown up on hard card and put into a big envelope and then I went made a record with them,

which is a silly song which I wrote myself. I was ready, I was already taking everything. I actually got some good people and I didn't. I did it myself, wrote my song, wrote this on myself, got a good arranger in made an arrangement of it, made a record with them, and it had a sort of nice, noisy,

brassy effect. In fact, I pinched the baseline of get Off My Cloud and put it onto Trombones and it was a good bouncy record and went along to EM I persuaded them to release it, and then I put that record into an envelope with this huge photograph and sent it to every DJ and producer and everybody in the country who had a show anything. And records were sold on television and not on radio shows. Radio didn't

play many records. There was Parrot radio, but the BBC didn't play records, and so you dependent on television performances and I knew because we had a postal service in those days that at six o'clock the next morning, every single one of those people I said it to would get woken up by the post because it wouldn't go through the postposts because the thing was too wide, and you know, everyone to get woken up. Sorry, GUF wouldn't go through the let's sorry to wake you up. But

that was it. They were going to get that, they're going to look at it. And then I just behaved despicably. I really was revolting. I called every one of them, so, are you going to play the record? And they said no. And of course there were hundreds of singles coming out

every week. There were new records every week, just the major artists alone, that people are having hits, the stones and people were enough records to fill every possible slot in every TV show and airwave, and so they always made their polite comments that I'm terribly sorry and love the song beautiful picture I haven't got and I just said, you're racious, isn't it? Because she's black and he's white, and and most TV producers and DJs, we've got pretty

liberal people. And I doubt if you'd have found one racist amongst the whole bunch of them. But so I said, I was very pretty nasty, and they all denied they were, and they all played it. We got five television shows and it went in the charts, and that's where the Arbor said, oh, we want this guy to managers.

name of the group. The new yard Birds didn't seem to matter much. But I also couldn't release the point of it, and he wanted to bring in different people, and bit by bit I could see this was going to be Jimmy's group. And I didn't really mind. I mean, it was I'd done the stupid thing of getting rid

of the key person. Paul Sammlesworth may have only been the best player, but he was the original person behind the group, and once he'd gone, despite Jeff being a wall of a guitarist, it was Paul who drove the group. And I was so stupid, you know, that I'd let him go and Jimmy was now the dominant person in the group and it was going to be Jimmy's group, And that was the way it went. I mean, I just decided I didn't want to bother with it. It was too much fighting and arguing, so so I went

along to Mickey Well. I discussed it, but it was quite amicable because at the time I just got with them. If I don't manage you, who's going to produce you? Because I've been producing them as well. It's the other thing i'd done when I started managing was I went straight and produced their first album, and I didn't know much about that either, but I was lucky it turned

out turned out pretty good. But then they knew how to produce themselves, so I said, well, at List, I better get your producer, and they all thought Mickey most would be a good idea because he produced the animals, and Jimmy liked Mickey Most because Jimmy had made all the Home and Silence records with him. So we went up to see Mickey Most and Mickey said, yeah, he'd like to produce the art buds. Who's going to balage you? And I said, I'm quite happy to give it up

if you want someone else to manage them. And Nick's business partner, well, I guess his protection was Peter Grant, and he's well, Peter could do it, and so Peter did it. And that's was Liz Zeppelin. So in terms of managing the yard person the fact that they ceased to exist at the end of my management, so I was a failure. On the other hand, led Zeppelin wouldn't have existed without this, so perhaps as a plus and

a minus there. And I kept Jeff Beck. I was going to manage Jeff Beck and that went all right for a bit, but that was difficult too because he Jeff was not Jeff was never interested in the commercial side of the music business. He just wanted to play his guitar. And I like commerce, I like the Hols and strap to the music bersins. I like the idea of making a record and trying to make money and promote it, making some of the just start and he hated.

Mickey also made his record High Host silver first single, High Host silver Lining, which I thought was a brilliant record. I still do today. I love the record, and Jeff wouldn't sing it, So you think you have separated Jeff from the group. We've got a hit record and Jeff refused to perform it. These are very difficult people. Time for life to get easier, so I moved on.

top ten best selling pieces of sheet music. The idea being you played them a home on the piano and the lyrics you sang in the pub, and records were secondary to that, and when rock and roll came along, sheep music you couldn't make rock and roll playing sheep music. And for the first time, records became more important. The sound became of the record became more important than the song, and so very quickly, within two years, the charts, both in America and UK changed from being the top ten

pieces of sheep music to the top ten records. And once the charts were the top ten records, the industry completely changed because whereas previously, music publishers would try to get as many people many recording artists as possible to record their best songs so they had more and more chances of selling the sheep music. Now when the chart was the records, the publishers wanted only one person to record each song because if there were two versions of it,

it would distill. It would diffuse the amount of records being sold. Lets's like to get the chart. So the artist became incredibly important. The great a good song was taken to one artist, Will you record the song? Nobody else can to record it, and that very quickly meant that the artist was more important than the song. An artist who'd had a big hit with this last record would probably get a hit with his next record, even if it wasn't a very good song. And very quickly

you didn't say what songs number one this week? You say who is number one this week? And who? Rather than what was the moment the industry changed. So by the time the sixties came along, who was at the top of the charts was the most important question. So when the Beatles broke and became so huge and had so many hits, often at the same time their name, it was not the songs which were talked about. Was the Beatles, the Beatles, the Beatles, Who was the key question?

And them being so huge really meant that the business shifted from being not just a sheet news business but to being a record business, but a business where you sold people. You know, Suddenly people the record industry understood that it wasn't even selling It wasn't any sheep news, It wasn't even sell any records. It was selling artists. And that's never changed since then. The record business is about it's an artist business. It's a hit record hit

artist driven, But record business companies are about artists. Many record companies won't even take a one off hit record anymore. If they think you're going to one off hit, there's nothing to support it in terms of artists. To stop worth spending the money promoting it and making it a hit, you haven't got something to continue with afterwards. So the Beatles were there at that moment, but there were five other groups waiting in the wings. You know, something had happened.

In ninety fifty five there was a record by a guy called Nonnie Dolligan called Rock Island Line, which was by a skiffle group. A skiffle group was the trad jazz bands I mentioned earlier in the intervals. They had to have intervals because they blew their lips out in forty minutes of playing. So they waved their rhythm sections forward and told the rootin section to sing a few songs.

And the songs they'd sing, because there were New Orleans jazz bands, would be New Orleans songs that they sing, the songs of Lead Belly and Big Bill brunsee the Southern black blues songs. And they call these interval groups skiffle groups, and one of them eventually had a hit record. And whereas rock and roll from America, kids in England like rock and roll, it was like movies. You liked a good movie, you saw it, you listened to it, but you didn't dispi to it. You didn't think you

could become that. It was too American, and it was too produced, it was too wound up with a huge industry. But skiffle was different. Skiffull was just a banjo player who played acoustic guitar for the record, and a double bass player and somebody banging on a washboard, just one of those boards your women used to scrub their clothes before washing machines. And when that became a hit, every teenager in Ingland wanted to do the same thing. Everyone.

It was extraordinary. There was a moment of empowerment for British teenagers because they had a very drab life. For you mentioned that it was rationing and you couldn't get chocolates if you wanted it. There was no teenage fashion, there was no love of popular music. But suddenly here was a British guy who couldn't sing very well. Singing

with virtually grew. Anyone could form a skiffle group. If you could find a guitar, You could make a double bass by shoving a broomstick and a box and putting a nail on either end and putting one string on it and plucking it. You can borry your mother's washboards.

You had a skiffle group. It was estimated. Within a year of that record, it was estimated there were fifty thousand teenage skiffle groups in England, and the year before that record came out, only five thousand acoustic guitars were sold in England and the year after two hundred and

fifty thousand, five thousand sat increase. And all these posicians who later became famous, whether it was where it was Rick Waitman and John or Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton, every one of them started at thirteen fourteen years old in akroup. The Beatles were the first. When Paul McCartney joined John John already had a skiffle group and that's what they called. And a skiffle group was pretty much anybody who could play anything or had an instrument, you

can join great. They were just pick up groups of

fourteen fifteen run kids playing whatever they had. And by the time the Beatles happened, the best of these groups have been together for four or five years and they some of them made some money and they swapped their washboard for drum kits, and their homemade bass guitar for an electric for electric bass, acoustic guitar for electric guitar, and they music had morphed from country, southern black blues to rhythm and blues, and so by the time you

got to nineteen fifty eight fifty nine sixty, rhythm was a wash with incredibly good rhythm and blues groups, I mean, playing absolutely as good as American groups, the difference being instead of Black American cast you know, cast away from society Black Americans, these were teenagers, were white post war British teenagers. They were singing American songs. They weren't writing

their own. But lyrics made something different. With Eric Burdens with the animals saying I'm a man, you know, he didn't mean you know, I'm maybe black, but I'm still a human being. He meant I'm eighteen and I'm horny. You know that all the lyrics were given new meanings just by different people singing them. And then they started writing their own songs. And when they started writing their own songs, that was when rock music started. That was the beginning of rock music. You know, rock music is

a totally English thing. It didn't come from America. Rock music came from America in the sense it was the influence of rhythm and blues and black music, but it was British teenagers that turned it into rock music. And the Beatles were the first of those groups. But when they happened in America wanted more. They were waiting them, and there was the Rolling Stones and the Animals and the Yards and Manfred Mann who drugs and the Kinks just waited all ivn't ready five years of plain to go.

to fifty with the British publisher. The British public goers twelve and a half percent of work they get, so we got twelve and a half cent to fifty to fifty. That was the normal deal in that says and then Bricky and I split that twelve and a half percent and then that never got changed. I mean, that was the deal went around the world. It was still quite a lot of money. I mean, it was nice money to have coming in every month. On the good side, it never changed and it's still paid. On the bad

side today we'd got four times as much money. Every time you Don't Have to Say You Love Me was sung in English anywhere in the world. The writer of the Italian lyric got twice as much money as we did for the lyrics just being sung. So that's how these things go. But about ten years ago we sold our share to EMI. And you know when you read about people selling their catalogs, and every week we read it SOMEDI are selling a catalog and they said they

sold their rights. They're not selling their rights. Their rights are already with the publishing companies who rouginally signed them. What they're selling is their flow of income, the flow of the writer's income, the income they get from the publisher for the writer's ship. That's what they sell, and then thereafter the publisher doesn't have to pay money income. And we sold that. We did quite a good deal for it, about what it was worth we at the time.

For what we got, i'd said we'd have to live another twelve years to regret it. We've got as much as we'd definitly get in twelve years after that we'd wish we hadn't sold it. Well, we've both lived another twelve years, so hopefully we'll die soon and then we won't have to regret it.

to Asia and write books. And before I could go, I was a knock on the door and a guy called Jazz Summers, who was also a manager was there. And still somebody suggested I come and see you, and I think we get on well and we ought to manage together. He had had a group called Blue Zoo, not not big by Japan, but they'd had number one record and they've broken up and he was a bit

pissed off with that. So we had something in common there, but I immediately didn't get on with And this is a guy who was not on my wavelength, you know he was. He was very aggressive, very confrontational. He spoke deliberately down market, so he sounded pretty you know in London and rough Later on I found that was part of an act from him. But someone had a friend of mutual friend that suggested he come and see me in I thought we just to beliked to our mutual friend.

Let's try, so I said, let's go and have lunch. I went around the road to the corners, the local Chinese restaurant, and then halfway through lunch, I found he could speak Chinese, so I thought, well, okay, he's not not quite the person I thought he wants already knocked on the door. Cantonies and his father had been in the army, so he was brought up in an army background, and they'd lived in Hong Kong when he was a kid.

Learned Cantonese, and he was a pretty clever, knowledgeable, thoughtful, well read guy and didn't really have to speak the way he spoke. It was sort of like a defense in a tough world, you know. And we became incredibly good friends. I'm in extraordinary good friends, and really learned to work together in a clever way because I'm really somebody who have voiced confrontation will always find a way to solve a problem and be diplomatic, and he is

a person who can't stand that waste of time. And so we learned when to use each other to solve problems, which was needed.

that moment. And at the moment he came by, Jazz was running away from two boys and crying, and his father hit Jazz for running away and crying and then tied him too his bike and made him run home behind his bike for a punishment for not fighting the two boys. Now you can you can imagine that creates quite a that creates quite a tough child. And so Jazz spent his life being extremely aggressive. But he achieved

a lot of things by being aggressive. And for instance, you're going to jump forwards, I'm going to jump forwards, but you can go through it in a minute. After WAM played in China and we managed to pull off what we could. Whole purpose of WAM playing in China was to jump the forwards and get them into stadium tours without waiting any longer. And everyone in America said

they're not ready for stadium tours. And we were signed with Frank Barcelona, and Frank Barcelona said no, you're not ready for tours, and Jazz did, yes, we are, this is what I want you to book. And Frank said, well, I'm not going to and Jazz, well, we're walking away from you. I don't care if we've got a sign contract. If you won't do what we want, why not with you?

And Frank's did you can't to Jazz that I can, and he did so Jazz walked away, went to another promoter and when he tried to book stadium tours, he find that Frank had booked every single stadium for three months ahead. Every stadium American He just put deposits down and made there were no stadiums anywhere in America.

group because George and Andrew were very definite. After we played China, we're doing stadium tours a great value to Jazz. But my god, he could be an angry man, but a good angry man. There was a great story when he went to EMI one day, this is just after we finished Manager, when he went to EMI to see the new head of a A and R of one of the divisions. And when he went in, the guy and and I were sitting behind the desk, and he said, grumbling. He said to Jazz, he said, this business is getting

taken over by quairs. And jazz leapt up in a fury, grabbed the guy by his lapels, smashed him against the wall and shouted, well, my wife's and my partner's are queer. And he pushed him in a cupboard, slammed the door shut, locked it, and threw the key out of the window as the third floor window. I like that story. The guy who's found forteen hours later by the cleaning pagers very well soiled. So that's a good side of jazz I like that.

Three or four groups who were about at that level, and one was Wham. And when we looked at the list, we both knew Whams the one we both seen them on Top of the Pops. We've seen their first Top of the Pops. It was extraordinary performance, really brilliant performance and quite out of the ordinary. This wonderful living, this sort of you know, the two young lads around town that Starsky in half Gymmetry the Romance Review call it,

and such slickness. And they knew how to work to camera and a wage this is the first time they've ever been on television. They look like they've been doing it every week for the lads, and so he said, let's chase after them. And we knew the publishers, Morrison Lee. He went to see them, and they thought we'd be a good idea. They knew Jazz, they knew his aggressiveness, his absolutely desire not to fail, and he took on.

They knew me from my reputation, particularly with Japan. Sudden the introducers to the group, and it was very interesting because it's true when you saw WAM on television on top of the Pops, they looked like a couple of twins. I don't mean they looked physically alike, but they were these two, you know, they were the lads around town. They were out the club, the two club, two young clubbers,

best friends. And when they came in the apartment, came into my part, they were the absolutely opposite of each other. I mean they were not like that. Andrew was like that. That image was Andrew. Andrew was the image for both of them. George is absolutely not he He came in, and Andrew came in and he said down. He put his feet up on my coffee table and picked up a book on the I've written my first first book, I wrote. He was reading a bit, said, oh, George

is Simon. Look at this. Simon was drunk and has sex all through the sixties. That's the guy we want, you know, we want something like that. George is sitting in a very uptight I want to know who you've managed, what you've done, what you would do with us. He said, you've got to We've got to have the best accountants. And I said, well, of course you get the best, and we want two lots of accountants. And I said, what's the other lot for? What to keep an eye

on the first lot. I mean, he was a very very cautious, untrusted, untrusting person, and I could see it once he really had come from exactly the background talking about an artist who has not trusted adults. He's had a he has had in his childhood, definitely not the costages surrounding which Andrew had had. It was a totally relaxed, easy going, charming gun. But that was excellent. What a

great combination. I mean, Andrew who could provide this image and this charm and George was so different A bit like Chas Night. You know, it was very, very different from each So we took them on and George said, we went to dinner and George said the first night, at the first dinner, were you're going to be the biggest group in the world, and you've got one year. I just laughed. I said, the biggest group in the world has to be the biggest group in America, because

it's sixty percent of the world market. And no British group's ever broken in America under three or four years. Even the Beatles took three or four years. That's completely impossible. MTV was just starting, but there was no national press, there was no leak without a MPY. Prior to that, there was no national word from merging group. It had to be done piece, region by region. I'd done it before the yardburs. It took time, and George so we'll take it or leave it one year or don't manage us.

So of course we say, yeah, okay, one year. And then as the dinner went on, Jazz or somebody had the idea, why not make you the first group ever to play in communist China, the first Western pop group ever to play in communist China, and George like that. He said, yeah, do that okay, great, fantastic settled and that was it. And then two weeks later I was in Beijing, sitting in a seedy hotel having just getting it.

Was amazing because you couldn't get visa for China in the sense unless you were part of an organized group invited by the government. But I someoney told me a place in Hong Kong I could go and buy a visa for a few hundred dollars and get across the border. And if you take the train to guang Jo and you go to the left hand gate immigration gate way for the guy called Juan Joe and show him your passport and he'll slip something in and watchur in the country.

So I got in the country. I got himself to Beijing, was sitting in this hotel and thinking, I want Wham to come and play in China. Who can give permission? And why would they? And the only person I can think of food give permission was just happened to be the head of Shana Danshalping, chairman of the Commorts Party, probably the second or third most important person in the world. An absurd thing to try to be doing and why would he let them in? But you know, I thought

a lot. I managed to get in touch with the minister. I told him what I was doing. He told me that China was opening up and they wanted to get lots of foreign investment, and I said, you know, the best possible way, the best possible way to get foreign investment is to invite a teenage pop group to come

and play in China. Because everyone in the world knows that teenagers are subversive like the older generation, they want to change things, they want to do things to Harry, they always work against the established order for China, to invite at western group to come to China would really show such confidence in yourself, such an ability to open up and accept new ideas. Your foreign investment were absolutely pouring.

And he wasn't convinced. And I went back every month for fifteen months, meeting more and more ministers and trying to persuade them, and eventually persuaded them, and eventually I was taken to an office where the minister got on a red phone which went directly to Danshao being they spoke and he told me, yes, you're invited to come and play this gig, which was an astonishing thing to pull off. I'm looking back now, I'm more amazed than

I was at the time. And yes, Wang got to play those stadium tours as a result, and China got its investment because I went back to Beijing a year later and the drab, dull, old fashioned Beijing which was there in nineteen eighty five when I first went, with no modern buildings at all, and just a single level, five story buildings on both sides of these wide avenues, so the whole thing was like huge prison yards. I went back a year later and everywhere it was like

a building, absolutely everywhere. And I went to see the minister who invited me, and he said it started the meeting. Within a month of that of your gig, the foreign investments poured in and it's doubled and continued to double every year. So that was quite fun to have been part of creating modern Beaiging.

what George with me. He's been half of this management. Everything has happened has been half because of him. And I can't do it anymore than if I told you right now you had to get rid of Andrew. You're planning to leave Andrew. But if I told you you had to, you wouldn't do it. And George, it's quite He's okay. He said, no, I understand you can't, but if you don't, you can't manage it. I said, well that's it. I won't manage it because I'm not prepared to go and tell Jazz. I'm going to do it

by myself. And that was it. Really we became. We were quite amicable about it. And then I went and told Jazz that we would not be managing. Wow, because I didn't say I didn't say. George said it was him I said, he doesn't want us to manage it, and so Jazz said, well, let's sell the company while we're still managiner. And so we made a deal with Harvey Goldsmith, who was the biggest promoter in the UK and who promoted all of Wham's concerts in the UK,

to sell our company to Harvey Goldsmith. It was quite a good deal and we get a capital son out of it. But the problem was Harvey Goldsmith had just sold his company to a guy called soul Kertzter who owned Sun City in South Africa. I didn't really bother as much because we were selling our company to Harvey and he hadn't sold his company to sun City. He sold his company to the guy who also owned sun City.

But when the deal went through, the Hollywood Reporter carried a headline which said WHAM Management sell to sun City, and George called me up. So I can't live with it. I can't live with that headline. I'm going to have to fire and again was quite amiable. It's strange people like to think that these things are always huge routes. But I went and had lunch with him and I said, well, it's too late now, and I can't get rid of

the headline. It's there, And he said, I just wish you'd done it more quietly, but I'm going to have to fire. So he did. But we were actually at that time, I, Jazz and I were also managing a guy called David Austin, who was one of George's best friends. And George said, don't I still manage I still managed to work with you, and well, I'll produce David Austin. So a week after he ostensibly farre us, you know, I went up to em I to talk about David

Austin debit. David aside with George and everyone hear Min was amazed, how can we fired you? Last week? He was sitting here talking. But you know, he fired me from being a manager. He didn't farm for being a friend. You know, it's just completely different things. There were good reasons, and he was right. I mean, he couldn't have headline is going to just worry or destroy his career. And so that was it. And then Harvey, I guess unsold his company and we unsold it. That was it. They

didn't worry me. I couldn't have broken George in America like he was broken I knew George was breaking up WHAM really because he was gay and he couldn't face the pressure of permanently having to dodge around and tell semi lies about his sexuality. And once he left, once he broke them up, the whole idea for me was

to become himself. And when he broke them up and then created a new image for himself which was even more non gay and even more heterosexual than the image had had, I told him, and we were still talking, that's going to kill you. You hate it. You can't live with that image. And if I'd been managing him, I just I wouldn't have gone managing it anyway, or I just decided not to do it, and I could

see what was going to happen. I mean, a year of huge success and I you know, the two managers of the American Managers GOT did a brilliant job for him and kept him going for that year Getting. He was getting more and more unhappy throughout the whole period, and by the end of the year. I mean, I did tell the story in the film I made about it, but at the end of the year he was he was pretty I'm unable to go on with it. He

knew he'd done emotionally the wrong thing. But the other hand, he had sixty million dollars in the back and that was him secure for the rest of his life, which is something he did want. So I had no regrets because I don't look at him think I could have done that. There's no way I could have gone through that year with them in America.

of his story life. And he saw the arc of a life story and he was far too aware not to be not to understand what a good a good story arc for an artist is. And he's had two bipolar relatives who'd committed suicide, and he was pretty obsessed with the idea that he might get driven to suicide. So whether he was suicidal or not, he did have in mind that he might die not a natural death at an old age. He always had that in mind, and he was not He was quite forthcoming about talking

about it. He was a very perceptive person about himself, and I think he foresaw himself as not getting very old. Oh Gary old, being seventy or eighty. You know when when his voice as he did that, when he did that sympoonicatur, he looked at him and thought, you know, he could be a Charles dazibor, he could be a Tony Bennett. He could go out and sing other people's songs almost better than his own songs. And going to a town with the Rufus waynerright song, he sang it

so well that everybody thought it was his song. He just he owned these songs when he sang. He sang other people's songs quite magnificently, and he could have been a very long term artist performing on their own. It didn't appeal to him at all. He wasn't interested. He wanted to create new music. We go back to one of the first questions you asked me, why can't older establish hugely skillful craftsmen still write hit songs. And the fact is the public don't want hit songs from those

older people. They want them from the person they knew as a young person. They're happy for the older person to recreate the younger thing again, got was sing it. They don't want to hear new songs from them. The songwriting didn't just diminish because his ability to write songs to themishes. The public stopped wanting them. They want the young songs. That's my thing.

five years. You have to get concept. You have to get the script, you have to raise the money, you have to make it promoted. You could make an album in the ninety sixties in a day. You could make an album today. Pick the best track out, have it on radio two nights later. The speed was so youthful, so energetic, as so much what I loved and wanted to do. And once I was in the music industry,

I was trapped. It was the music industry is a hugely enjoyable, fun, undisciplined world, and the film industry has to be disciplined. You can't be undisciplined. Too many people contribute to a film. I needed to contribute at every level, both the dull ones and the creative ones. They're all needed. And so I opted out and had my fun. But by the time, by the time I got to the nineties, I really wanted to make films. I wanted to do what I'd sort of always wanted to do but hadn't done.

And it just fitted. It just fitted my personality and how I wanted to live. And as much what I mean, I'm work more fun than writing books because I went to writing books first. I'd always thought I should be a writer. I wrote books, and I wrote three or four very well received, very good books. But writing books

is so tedious. I mean you sit for a year and than a room by yourself and have all the self doubts which you get with anything when you create, but you have them all bottled apping yourself for a year and not fun at all. Making movies is very relaxed. It's communal, you're out with people, you're talking and discussing things. You have to compromise a bit more than you do with writing, but it's a pleasant life. And there's no

age barrier either. You know my age now in the film business, in record business, it's incredibly difficult persuade people that some of my age should have should be effective in the record business. If you write down the top grossing the top twenty grossing film directors in the world, half of them are over seventy and five of those are over eighty. So there's no age barrier to making films. So it felt like and comfortable to get into for the last lap.

a bit longer, much longer. And then a couple of weeks ago you were writing about how you like to be perfect at all times, and you you're currently you are they see you weren't so well after all. I've got Listen, you get to eighty five when people say how are you? The easiest thing to hand them a list? You know there's going to be five or six things wrong with me. If I was fifty and I had those things wrong with me, I'd be horrified. With any

one of them. But you learn to live with them, and you learn to cope with them, and they're just just annoyances. But you have to be aware. I've got a little chart I found in them online a few weeks ago. At eighty five, your chances of living beyond one year only fifteen percent. So there's an eighty five percent chance eighty five percents I won't be live next year. Funnily enough, each year you live longer, that chance gets greater, because the average age of death is eighty three y four.

If you go past that, you're now into the people who live longer.

If I had the most brilliant idea and everybody agreed that it's brilliant, and everybody says, we want to put money and this is this is an amazing film, this is going to happen, it'll still be five years before it's on the screen. That seems to be longer than it's worth getting involved at eighty five. So I go for documentaries where you can have an idea now and it could be you could be making it in a

few weeks. And I'm working on two films currently, you know, just pretty good be interested to have two films at once, So I'm pretty happy with it. One of those two films, I'm making one about the Marquee Club. And my actually, my feeling about the Marque Club was what would be interesting is not to make a film just about a club. I've seen a couple of American films about clubs, one about the Go Go and Whiskey and Gogan, one about the La Club. They get a bit boring, just endless.

People say, hey, way man, you know everyone was down there, Brad Pitt was smashed. I looked at the Marque Club and I thought, the story is how trad jazz turned into skiffle turned into rock. The story I told you earlier that all happened at the Marque Club. The Marque Club was a trad jazz club which became a skiffle club, which became the Rhythm of Blews Company. It became the birthplace of rock, and then every major rock group played there. So we're really looking at the story of the music

and the evolution. A two or three part series on that, but all at the Marquee Club, because that is where it happened. So that film's underway and we've got a great number of people. I went into viewed Phil Collins a couple of weeks ago. Great keep Phil Collins at fifteen left school every day at three o'clock and took the train into town and arranged the chairs and the Marquee clubs so they'd let him in free. And he could sit in the front row. He did that for

two years, so every single group is great. That's the story we wanted more than the story of his stardom later. Enormous number of people who went through this whole process. It's a very exciting fun film to make. Fat They come to La shortly and we're talking to Big Fleetwood and Brown Auger and the other film I'm doing is the Wham to China film and the story of taking Wam to China. It's an amazing story because I glossed over it with you when I was telling it tonight,

because it goes on a long time. But how I've persuaded all those ministers to take Wan, and how the thing evolved, and there was an extraordinary story. You know, artists are very up and down. George not the least. It took fifteen months ago into China, every single month, and I fed ministers. That's why I got it. I'd bought lunch in a Beijing which had no good foods.

There was one great restaurant and the only hotel foreigners were allowed to stay up and they had a great restaurant because it was paid for and dollars so they could get an important good food. The food in Beijing wasn't good. And every week I got more and more ministers to come who were really coming just because they loved the meal and didn't even want the thing to come off because when it did, it at the end

of their dinners or under their lunches. And I'd report back every month to George and Andrew and say what's going on. I could see we were getting there, and we finally pulled it off. And when I flew back finally and I had the invitation, I got to London, I told my secretary call a press conference tomorrow. We're going to announce it. Caught up George Andrews had come to dinner and tell um, we've done it. We're going to play in China. And George said, I change your mind.

I don't want to do it, and he was serious and absolutely don't want to do it. Just completely change. It's not what I want to do. And Andrew and I just sat and argument for an hour over dinner, and finally George said, well, I'll do it, but no journalists saw reporters, which was the whole purpose of doing it. Well, of course, three weeks later he bounced out in the stage and we're three hundred film crews, journalists, reporters, photographers,

and he didn't mind at all. You just like all artists, they get nerves that one minute they're megalomaniacs. They're so full of confidence. You wanted calm them and said, come on, you know things can go wrong, be careful, and other minutes they just collapse in a bundle of nerves. He had those moments, like any good artist should.

low gives you cause and effect. And that's the moment when people doubt themselves because they suddenly realize that giving up their opportunity to be a doctor or a scientist by leaving university to become a rock star, and is it what I want? So this is a very good reason for these high level of death sort of suicides

to happen. Then I made a film called fifty Years Legal, which is to mark the fiftieth Ani versus Brittain, a decriminized sol and sexiarity that costs about that costs about half a million, and we've got every single gay personality in Britain and David Hotney and Stephen Fryan just everybody to talking that. And then this one about George George Michael portrait of an artist, same sort of same sort of money you're talking about it. Half the problem with

all these films is when you're interviewing. When you're doing interviews and talking heads to us stars, they're not easy to get. You have to go where they are, so you end up on a lot of travel and a lot of wasted time, you know, four days flying somewhere

to talk to one person's that's an extravagance. And the one I'm doing now, the Marquee, we it's privately raised money, but we've got the money for a ninety minute film, but we're getting so much material we think it needs to be probably a three three times one hour, even a four times one hour, because when we get to rock music actually happening, it fragments into so many different areas to pro crock, punk, rock, golf rock, and it'd be nice to follow the follow It could could snowball

into a bigger film, but again, a sort of a half million pound budget for six hundred thousand dollars bout it for a nineteen minute film and if it goes into a three times one hour, probably going up to two million.

write in a wonderful, flowing, impulsive way. You know.