Hunky Dory (Who Knew) Page 3

  In 1962, Alan Carter, a long-time friend from the ice rink days, had also recently qualified as an accountant, and he introduced me to fellow graduate Ellis Goodman. Ellis had been to public school and wore dark suits, which in my book meant he was a proper accountant. The idea was that the three of us would start up a new accountancy firm. In the event, Alan dropped out and Ellis and I decided to go into business together. Goodman Myers and Co., Chartered Accountants, was thus born.

  In April 1962 Marsha and I were married. Marsha’s father, Jack Bloom, had divorced her mother many years earlier. He was a very successful antique-silver dealer and made our wedding party a modest bash for three hundred guests at The Dorchester hotel in Park Lane. Most of our friends at the wedding we have kept to this day, and at our thirtieth anniversary I counted eighty people who had been at our big day three decades earlier. We are soon to celebrate our fifty-seventh wedding anniversary and inevitably there will be fewer of the original guests there. Jack and Marsha’s other family helped us to buy our first home, a tiny house in Abercorn Place, St John’s Wood. Jack was a wonderful and generous man and his support had a very positive effect on my life. He encouraged me to dare and, most importantly, he was someone I felt provided me with a safety net should I ever falter.

  Goodman Myers & Co. initially consisted of Ellis, a secretary and myself. Ellis’s father – a delightful man called Manny Goodman – was coming to the end of his career as a provider of posters for the film business and we based ourselves at his tiny office in Blenheim Street, just off Bond Street. The offices were on the third floor, and to get to it you had to walk up rickety stairs past a tailor’s workshop and Bev’s Blenheim Club, a tiny drinking establishment on the second floor. As well as buying a dark suit, I invested in a bowler hat and umbrella in the hope that I would pass as a city gentleman. We had very few clients but Ellis had managed to find some sub-contracting work from a large accountancy firm that he knew. Ellis’s clients included Petula Clark, which – with my latent show-business aspirations – made me most jealous.

  Soon we developed some clients of our own and were able to take on our first employee, a delightfully eccentric young Indian clerk called Mitra. Mitra came from quite a wealthy family in Delhi and was to go back and face an arranged marriage as soon as he qualified as an accountant. He therefore took a delight in failing his exams, thus ensuring an income from India and a continued pursuit of cricket and English girls. I once found him in the office, eyes closed, doing up and undoing a bra on a modelling bust that he had brought to the office. An explanation? ‘Tonight, Mr Myers, I am taking a girl to the cinema and am therefore practising the removal of her brassiere in the dark.’

  Mitra had a vivid imagination. He was always late and always had improbable excuses. His best, in his delightful Indian accent, being: ‘I was thinking that I had the diabetes. The doctor told me to provide him with a urine sample, which I expressed into the small bottle that he provided. I left this in the toilet of the house I am sharing with some English girls. Later on, unbeknown to me, one of the girls had left her own urine sample in a bottle in the same lavatory and by some mistake I was taking her bottle instead of mine to the doctor. This morning the doctor asked me to urgently attend his premises where he told me, “Mitra, you do not have the diabetes but you are pregnant.” That is why I am late.’

  On another occasion I was sitting with one of our few clients, reviewing some accounts that Mitra had prepared. Having a small query, I called for Mitra to come into my office. This he did, immediately dropping to his knees, hands held protectively over his head, imploring, ‘Please don’t beat me, Mr Myers. Please don’t beat me.’ I have many Mitra stories but they really don’t work without his fabulous accent. He eventually left us, before I did him actual bodily harm, and I often wonder if he ever returned to India to face his arranged bride.

  Ellis ran the practice. There was no fight over this as he was much better at running a business than me, and I knew it. In later years, had he run all of my businesses, he would have prevented me making many of the big mistakes that I made left to my own devices. Ellis went on to be an extremely successful businessman. He now lives in the USA, but we are still close friends and Marsha and I have enormous affection for him and for Gillian, his wife.

  6. MICKIE MOST – MY PARACHUTE INTO THE HEART OF THE LONDON MUSIC SCENE

  It was my relationship with legendary record producer Mickie Most that got me into the music business. In 1964 my accountancy partner, Ellis Goodman, had a chance meeting on an airplane with a man who wanted to back Mickie Most in opening a record company to be called Warrior Records. The man was looking for an accountant to represent the company and Goodman Myers & Co. was duly appointed.

  We were by no means a successful firm yet and we welcomed a new client. Aware of my personal passion for music – I had actually bought ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, the hit that Mickie produced for The Animals – Ellis agreed that I should take over the account.

  As they say, the devil is in the details, and the Warrior Records deal was far from done. It quickly became apparent that Mickie and the potential investor had different views on how the venture should be run and Mickie decided not to go ahead with the deal. A court case ensued, and the investor understandably thought that we would support him, but I really thought that Mickie – who had no business experience at that time – had been badly misled by his would-be investor, and Ellis and I decided to support him. It would be hard to resist accusations that ethically we had done the wrong thing. It is said that there are three phases in a businessman’s life. ‘Dishons’ is the time when you do things that you would rather not, in order to get on; ‘Hons’ is when you want to be regarded as an honourable, ‘his word is his bond’ type; and ‘Honours’ is when you want to be recognised with some glory – be it a knighthood or being enrolled in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame. Backing Mickie Most against the man who brought him to us was definitely in the first category, but without Mickie I would not have had the entrée to the music business that has given me a career.

  Born Michael Peter Hayes to a military family in Aldershot, Mickie Most had left school at fifteen. As a wannabe pop star, he worked as a singing waiter at the influential 2i’s coffee bar in London’s Soho, where, incidentally, Peter Grant – the future Led Zeppelin manager – was working as a bouncer. Mickie, with Alex Murray as his partner, had an undistinguished career as a part of the pop duo The Most Brothers. In 1959 he followed his wife Christina back to her native South Africa and had some local success as Mickie Most and the Playboys. He came back to London in 1962, where he briefly tried his luck again as a singer, before deciding that there was a better future for him as a record producer.

  The producer’s function was to choose a song, outline the arrangement of the music, and then supervise all aspects of the recording in the studio. A great producer is like a master chef. He just knows how to mix the ingredients, and what needs adding to season the dish. Most importantly he knows when to stop adding more. In 1964 the producer was, in most cases, pivotal to the making of a hit record. With the right song, a skilled producer in a well-equipped studio could make a great record out of the most limited of singing talents. Tamla Motown famously made great tracks of great songs and then decided which artist got to sing on the track. Phil Spector with his wall of sound – arguably the most influential record producer of his era – could have had his hits with almost any artist he chose to work with. Of course, there were exceptions to this very general rule. The Beatles had unlimited talent but even so, it was George Martin, their producer, who fashioned them into a hit factory.

  Mickie’s first successes as a producer came in 1964, with The Animals. ‘Baby Let Me Take You Home’ was released in April, followed by ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ in October. It was just after this release that Mickie came into my life.

  It was a great time to be involved in the music business, which was going through a worldwide revolution starting out in England, and
I was lucky enough to be involved at the heart of it. Popular music had changed in the fifties. And not just the music, but also the way the public heard it and bought it. The forties were the golden age of radio and being a radio star was an accolade second only to being a film star. The public bought records that caught the magic of an artist who had established themselves via film, radio or personal appearances. Frank Sinatra’s bobbysoxers, the first of the hysterical girl fans, were created by his personal appearances and radio shows with the Tommy Dorsey Band. Teenagers did not exist as a defined cultural group until the mid-fifties, when both in America and in the UK a very few radio programmes started catering to the younger audience. This was no doubt due to the fact that sponsors were recognising that teenagers had spending power and spots on their faces that needed clearing up. When teen-oriented programmes were on air, kids would be glued to the radio. Suddenly a recording by a relatively unknown artist could be a hit. Records by Frankie Laine, Johnny Ray, Eddie Fisher, Al Martino and their contemporaries were instant hits with kids, mainly young girls. The first chart published in the UK was in 1952 and the first No. 1 was Al Martino’s ‘Here In My Heart’, a big romantic ballad.

  Young boys were to find their own idols when rock’n’roll came in a few years later, pioneered by Bill Haley’s ‘Rock Around The Clock’ in 1954 and exploded when Elvis released ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ in 1956. The British soon created idols of their own with Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, Billy Fury and many others, nearly all pale imitations of the American pioneers. Radio exposure now made the record king. A star could be created by radio play alone, without the artist needing to rely on personal appearances or film.

  A record producer was to a record what a director was to a film. In the world of early sixties’ pop music, the independent producer picked the song, usually written by someone other than the artist, supervised the musical arrangements and the sound created in the studio. A good producer listened to a song that would be presented to him with just a piano or guitar accompaniment and had a vision of what it would sound like with a change of tempo or a specific arrangement. Most importantly the producer crafted a record that the teen public would want.

  Previously, the best recording studios were owned by major record companies. The growth of the independent producer encouraged a proliferation of independent studios. The creative power of the major companies was being eroded, although they still controlled manufacturing and distribution as well as the all-important financial power to pay for recordings and marketing. Staff A&R men – their initials showing they were responsible for Artists & Repertoire – were employed full time by the major record companies. They were usually under-salaried and undervalued.

  I knew Norrie Paramor, who was a staff producer at EMI records. He produced, amongst many other artists, Cliff Richard, Frank Ifield, Helen Shapiro and Ruby Murray; all top stars of their time. He had produced more No. 1 singers than any other producer of the day working in England. He once told me that, having heard that American producers got a royalty on sales, he approached Joseph Lockwood – the feared and respected head of EMI Records – and timidly suggested that, like his American counterparts, maybe he himself could get some small royalty on sales of the records that he had produced. He had heard that the going rate for top US producers was 2 per cent of the retail-selling price of a record so, not wishing to push it, he suggested getting a half per cent. Lockwood said that he would consider it. Norrie was later summoned back to the great man’s office.

  According to Norrie, Lockwood said, ‘Paramor, we have run the figures. Do you realise how much money we would have paid you at a royalty of half a per cent?’

  ‘No,’ replied the frightened Norrie.

  ‘Well,’ thundered Joseph, ‘it comes to over two hundred thousand pounds!’

  Norrie told me that he was so appalled at the thought that he, a mere employee, could earn that sort of money, he had apologised profusely for his temerity and settled for a raise of a thousand pounds a year and a new Ford Cortina. Even George Martin is on record saying that he was on a salary of two thousand pounds a year from EMI when he started producing The Beatles – making millions for the company.

  I could see that all of this was going to change and I was determined to be one of the people who helped make it happen.

  Mickie was also producing Herman’s Hermits, who were signed to EMI, and The Nashville Teens, who were with Decca. Although he had had some success, his deals were poor and he was not in a position to pay us any fees for the work we would have to do as his accountants. I was reluctant to let him go as a client, as I really believed in his talent, and I had a passion for the music that he was making. I suggested that instead of fees, we would take a 10 per cent stake in all of the companies, and Mickie happily agreed. We set up three companies: Rak Records, Rak Music Publishing and Rak Management. Peter Grant, his old friend from the 2i’s, had worked for a variety of people as a road manager and tour manger, but he was currently unemployed and Mickie asked him to head-up Rak Management. Peter was a huge figure of a man who, long before he became the legendary manager of Led Zeppelin, tried his hand as a film extra and professional wrestler.

  Mickie’s younger brother Dave would take care of the publishing interest, having had no previous experience – but there was no school for music-business executives and the independent side of the business was so new that anybody could get a shot at getting involved. Mike Jeffery, who managed The Animals and later on Jimi Hendrix, was running a coffee bar and some music venues when he signed The Animals for management. The only company that had activity from day one was Rak Records, because Mickie was already recording artists. I was now unquestionably involved in the music business and was really enjoying my life.

  State-of-the-art recording studios of today can record voices and instruments on a virtually unlimited number of different tracks and have the ability to infinitely vary the sound on each of those tracks in hundreds of ways and even auto-correct a singer’s out-of-tune note. This technology was not available to Mickie, who used to record at the Kingsway Recording Studios in Holborn. Kingsway had a very basic four-track desk and this meant that there were only four separate mics available during recordings. In simple terms, he only had the ability to add a little echo and reverb. Sessions were booked in three-hour blocks and Mickie could make a hit single and a B-side in this limited time. ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, which sold millions, probably cost under two thousand pounds to record and mix. Today, many artists spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of pounds to make a record. Eventually Mickie opened his own recording studio in St John’s Wood, and it is still run by his widow Chris today.

  Mickie and Chris became close friends with me and my wife Marsha. We went on holiday together and frequented the trendy restaurants of the day. The most ‘hip’ was the trattoria Terrazza, where it was essential to be seated in the back room along with the likes of Michael and Shakira Caine, Roger and Luisa Moore and many stars of stage, screen and rehab clinics. The funny thing is that the back room was a late addition to the already fashionable restaurant, and Mario, the owner, once confided in me that he thought that nobody would want to sit in the space that was windowless and nothing particularly special. Alvaro, the manager, who later went on to open his own eponymous restaurant, worked the magic to make it desirable. Whenever anyone phoned for a reservation, he would say, ‘Of course, but I regret I do not have a table in the back room.’ In no time at all, being seen in the front room was unthinkable. This was a reminder of how easily we the public can be manipulated to be ‘where it’s at’.

  Our most frequented clubs were Tramps, which is still going, and the Ad Lib, and it was a great thrill to hear the DJ play a record that Mickie had produced. There were lots of clubs where musicians hung out, like the Bag O’ Nails and The Cromwellian, where you would often see a Beatle drinking with a Rolling Stone.

  The legendary Marquee Club in Oxford Street, which moved to Wardour Street in 1964, was the ve
nue to see great bands. the Stones, The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Led Zeppelin and other big bands of the sixties and seventies all played there and it was a hangout for A&R men who were looking for new talent.

  One of my earliest memories of being with Mickie was on a flight to New York with Andrew Oldham. Mickie and Andrew commandeered a spare wheelchair and blanket before boarding the flight. Andrew sat on the chair, tucked his knees under his legs and covered them with the blanket. In those days, airplanes were always boarded by a flight of stairs and Andrew allowed himself to be carried up the stairs by two struggling stewards. Once on the plane, he jumped up, thanked the stewards for their help and walked jauntily down the aisle towards our seats. I was convinced that we would be thrown off the plane. We were not, but for me, it got worse. We were sitting in first class, and in those days you could smoke at the front of each cabin. Andrew produced a joint which he lit and shared with Mickie. There were not many passengers in our cabin and most had chosen to sit at the rear. I looked nervously towards to the passengers at the back, hoping that the plane’s air-conditioning did not allow the smoke to drift backwards. There was only one other passenger in our row: an attractive young woman of about twenty. Mickie offered her a toke which she declined with a smile. I declined too – not out of morality, but out of fear. Before they finished the joint, he once again offered it to the young lady, who said ‘I’d better not, my father’s the chief pilot.’ Uncharacteristically, I took advantage of the free bar to recover my nerves.

  Early in 1965, Mickie, Chris, Marsha and I went to a party at composer Lionel Bart’s house in Seymour Walk, off the Fulham Road. The house was wonderfully over the top, as you would expect from the outrageously profligate Lionel. There were bowls of joints everywhere and the finest of wines were served in abundance. We once met Lionel in Positano, where he had taken a suite and several rooms at The Splendido for the entire summer. The hotel was, and still is, one of the most expensive hotels in Italy, but Lionel had reserved one room for himself, one for his boyfriend and the other rooms for friends passing through.