I was being pulled from pillar to post. EMI bought half the company and Chris had the other half. It got very difficult to manage the label when I had Jim Fifield saying one thing in one ear, and Chris saying another thing in the other. “Eventually, at a meeting in the St. James Club in LA, I had to get up and say, ‘I can’t deal with this.’ Chris was always, ‘Spend more money’; EMI was always, ‘Keep things tight.’ It was impossible.” An escape route was about to emerge in the form of a call from an old friend from the pub rock days, and the chance of the top UK job at a truly independent label. Finally, no more culture clashes, no more balancing the demands of irresponsible spendthrifts and penny-pinching parent companies. And, sweet relief, no more EMI… How did you get the Virgin job? I think it was Webbo [Jon Webster] who rang me first and asked if I’d have dinner with him. I loved Webbo, and I’d known him since the Kursaal days, but it was still a bit odd for him to ask me to come out to dinner. But I went, and he said, ‘Look, Ken [Berry, Virgin Records President] wants me to do international, and come out of being Managing Director in the UK; would you be interested?’ Well of course I was; it was like going from Atalanta to Juventus. But I went to see my lawyer, Tony Russell, and I said, ‘It’s for sale, isn’t it?’. He was very proper and legal about it, mumbled something non-committal… So I went to see Richard [Branson] at his house. He’d offered me loads of jobs before, so I knew him pretty well. He gave me the impression that the label wasn’t for sale, but I was far from convinced. I actually thought they were going to do the deal with BMG, and it wasn’t until the last moment, I think, that EMI came in and offered more money. But they offered me a good package, it was another challenge and so, yeah, okay, I’ll go for it. Anyway, on the day it was announced that Virgin had been sold, Richard came in and made a speech about how terrible it was and how sad he was that he’d sold the
company for a billion dollars. And then Webbo gave a more impassioned speech along the lines of, ‘It’s the end of the an era, Virgin’s all over’ and things like that. Thanks Webbo. Of course I had just taken the job, and I walked across the bridge back to my office thinking, ‘What the hell have I done?’ Because I had to straddle old Virgin and new Virgin, plus we had to let some people go. Ken Berry had given me very strict instructions on how he saw the label. He wanted Virgin to remain as Virgin had always been, leftfield, but obviously it had to fit into the corporate confines of EMI at the same time. I think he knew that via WEA and Chrysalis, I’d been used to working in a corporate environment, but also that I’d had the Stiff days. And it turned out my timing wasn’t unlucky, it was supremely lucky, because I
friends were... well, I don’t know if they were friends, or if they were just scared for their jobs or whatever. But, somehow, I had to make it work. There were certainly people who viewed me with suspicion, or maybe they just didn’t like me. There were definitely some quite embittered people, people who thought that Richard had taken that money and that he should have shared it more equally among some of his senior staff. There was a lot of angst. But I think were also a lot of people who realised that what I was trying to do is make it work going forward, and help them keep their jobs. Don’t forget, going back in time, Richard used to throw parties at the manor and come down in outrageous outfits and all that. Now, I mean, I like a jolly jape, I like a laugh and everything like that, but we worked hard and we played hard; worked hard first. That was then and this was now, we were a more serious Virgin, we just were. I had responsibilities, not only to Ken, but to EMI and the people who were paying my salary.
“It was very hard to read who was going to stab you in the back.”
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had 10 years at Virgin when we were the most successful label of that period We had such a broad roster, and being a child of the John Peel generation, my musical taste has always been broad, eclecticism is everything, so to run a label that’s home to everyone from Michael Nyman to The Spice Girls was a dream. That initial period must have been tough, though. You would have been seen as the outsider parachuted in to dismantle the culture that Virgin had been built on. It was very hard to read who was going to stab you in the back, put it like that. Because, don’t forget, Stiff had gone through Virgin as well, from a sales point of view, so I knew all of them. But, honestly, I can’t say I spent too much time thinking about it because if I had, I don’t think I would have managed to get on. You just had to find out who your
Who were the artists you most enjoyed working with? I think the artists who were the most driven, because they were the easiest and would follow the route maps. That would certainly include the likes of Phil Collins, Meatloaf and The Spice Girls, who had such an incredible work ethic. And then, going back to Stiff, the likes of Madness, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury. It’s hard to pick, because one always had moments with artists, when they would clash with you, or the manager would. We have to speak a little bit more about The Spice Girls, because they were such a huge part of your golden years at Virgin. What do you remember about your first meeting with them? I was in my office and Tony Gordon, who managed Boy George, came in. He used to come in every so often and try and get his royalty check paid early so he could get his commission, he was quite a legendary old school manager.