Did it ever occur to anyone that nothing lasts forever?  Even if you don’t like Simon Cowell, and although personally I do then give  him one thing,  give him the credit on timing. His American Idol exit is precision timing. Look how well it worked for Little Britain and better still Basil Fawlty, knowing when to quit and sticking by your decision no matter how much money you’re offered. Seinfeld was another, wild horses wouldn’t drag him back and the residuals  for the rest of his life and beyond were more than ample. Who needs the cash apart from NBC of course. People like to have something to remember and sustaining respect and the loyalty from your fans is all about knowing when to back away and them remembering you as part of something that revolutionized television, something that was what it was because of you. They remember you for that and if it starts to decline they don’t remember you at all. The ship sinks, you drown in it. But Simon will be gone by then so if the good ship Idol were to sink he will be known as the reason it sunk. And the reason it sailed was because of him. Touche, his adoring crowd will always remember him fondly.

Great TV stars, film stars, maybe even porn stars are the ones who understand shelf life, formerly known as artist integrity. Otherwise known as sharp cookies. More in tune with longevity and not grabbing what they can while they can, like all good artists they have confidence in their own ability. They like to reinvent themselves and take on new challenges, they don’t want everything on a plate and then wonder when the plate is taken from underneath them. No more gruel Scrooge, get back to the kitchen and cook it up all over again.

We’re a live for the moment generation, too afraid that our star will cease to shine and someone else will be grabbing at our coat tails. Where are the managers hell bent on sustaining that pedigree of artist who is there on merit. And when did merit and ability and the desire to succeed ever go away? The greedy came along and robbed us and once they got in they kept coming back to rob us more and more. Talent is there to be discovered, nurtured and then made available to the masses to see just what it was that got us attracted to them in the first place. It’s never about throwing a herd of wannabes in a multitude of car parks spread across a continent so that a wizard of pop can dictate who does what with you, when and for how long. Then it’s out of the car park and back on the bus to oblivion because foolishly, for one minute you thought you had what it took. The bare faced cheek to turn up.

Simons?!

watch television. The show that every network turned down is now the only show that makes a difference. If you’re a pop act and you have a record out and you get asked to appear, then you do it. That is of course if you have a record out and Whitney Houston doesn’t or if she’s round at Clive’s having tea or massaging his ego. My God could you imagine dinner with those two……pass the hurl bucket.  I digress.

It must be heartening for any artist to hear the stuff people turn down. What happened with American Idol happened with The Beatles, The Stone Roses, you name it…..  they had the knock back. Ponders the question, who are the people elected to pick what works and what doesn’t work? TV and the music business has become dull because of the people making the decisions. They clearly have no idea what people want. Hence we have the most popular  ’music show’ ever where the public actually has to tell them what they want.  And then one success spawns a thousand unimaginative carbon copies. Where once we had an act that attracted an audience now we have an audience that can attract any act because they all have to do it, appear on that show! Simple really, if you want to get seen or heard you line up at Simon Cowell’s door. It’s a monopoly and it’s dangerouse. Further more they’re not budging,  not at least any time soon.

Record companies have no clue whatsoever. (It might have something to do with the fact that most of the people who work there have no idea about music)They constantly turn down what ultimately pays their own wages. Record companies can no longer sign bands because they do not know how to develop bands. They have no fucking idea and what’s worse is they don’t care. They don’t care that what made generations integrate, love one another, even give us a healthy foreign export all revolved around music. Call me idealistic I don’t care, but the people who sit in their halcyon towers crunching the numbers have no feet to put on the ground. They want to see a return straight away when  no relevant band in history paid the rent from day one. What they did do was build a base for an industry to thrive for a very long time until the pendulum swung and the lunatics took over the asylum. Not only did they run it, they enrolled the inmates. We are now fed a staple diet of stuff that doesn’t require us to ponder over whether or not it’s good or not, it’s just there. Who cares if it’s good, as long as it can sell instantly and we can get a return. The law of averages says a proportion of the cattle will chew the cud. Or is it sheep, lemmings even? It’s just fodder when all is said and done.

Where are we going, well as Bob Dylan so rightly said, ‘No Direction home’ There is no route. Over the coming weeks months, years , decades I may be granted time on this turntable we call earth I intend to bring forth and interrogate those that matter, those who gave me a purpose, a reason to get up in the morning and throw myself in to what was an unbelievable place to be. The artists and the record industry, the record stores, the bands, the media we all worked as one . And you know what, we were fucking good. Too good to sit back and see what this industry has become, a playground for the people who were once behind the scenes. We are creating immovable objects, Clive Davis was a music man, once.  There was a time when he wanted to create stars to see what they could become, to let them grow and flourish, to see them last and then to influence others. And now, it’s not because of what they are but because of what they can do for him. The ego is mightier than the music. When in all it’s years have the people behind the scenes become bigger than the artists? I don’t think it was meant to be that way was it? Who’s more successful than Simon Cowell or Clive Davis? Instead of making them (the artists)they made themselves! Simon Fuller is equally as powerful and with an astute mind, a marketing genius…….. but at least he doesn’t have a need to grab the limelight. Instead of pop stars we now have  industry stars.

The glorious days of radio and the pirates seem to come and go all too quickly, but what a memorable time it was for all of us that had the opportunity to experience those rebels at sea doing what they passionately believed in, giving us the chance to hear great music. All day every day.

Sadly the Marine Offences Act became law at midnight on August 14th 1968, and battle as they did, the pirates slowly, one by one sank.  In 1968 the UK’s national ‘official’ station Radio One launched off the back of the demise of the pirates. After crushing any competition it wasn’t going to be hard for them, the public had been left with nothing.  They were owned by the BBC and they were funded by license payer’s money. Everyone who had a TV license was contributing to radio, whether they liked it or not.

Then the independent radio stations started to spring up.  Piccadilly Radio in Manchester, BRMB in Birmingham, Radio Clyde in Glasgow, and Capital Radio in London were four of the first ones.  Radio One poached some of the pirate DJ’s, guys like John Peel and Tony Blackburn, and  Johnny Walker, a pirate through and through and one who stayed loyal even when they were banned. I often find it hard trying to explain to people just what pirate radio sounded like back then but it’s so very hard. All I know is that there never has and never will be anything quite like it ever again. Even as they were sinking they still sounded as new and as fresh as the day they were born. It was revolutionary then and it’s still revolutionary now.

‘Well I Can’t tell you what I think I can do if I hadn’t heard it can I?’ ‘No, I just need you to get them on the radio, I need interviews and I need them on daytime. This is Loius Walsh and Ronan’s new boy band. They’re going to be huge.’ I paused, was I hearing him correctly? He was asking me to get a band no one had heard of or heard anything by, least of all me, on the radio to be interviewed! He had to be kidding. I’m sure this was him out to prove to Louis Walsh who had chosen to sign his band to Simon just what he could do. I uttered the same curiousity, ‘You are joking aren’t you?’

I was wasting my time. We were destined for a trip round the houses by way of anything resembling a conversation. Simon Cowell wanted me to call local radio stations, stations that rarely played anything that weren’t hits and set up a bunch of radio interviews with a boy band no one had ever heard of. He didn’t think it mattered that the radio promotion guy, never mind the radio station had been allowed to hear them.

It makes me laugh now but the look on Lee and the others who I had working for me was hilarious. I put the phone down and shouted across the room. ‘Are you ready for this? Simon Cowell wants us to get interviews for Westlife.’ Reverberating across the room came the reply’ Who the fuck are Westlife.’ Oh I wish I’d have said that to Simon! All for one and one for all we couldn’t believe what he was asking of us. I just shrugged my shoulders and said, trust me there isn’t a conversation we need to go and do it.

You couldn’t reason with Simon over something like this. Never mind Randy Jackson, enter THE dog with his bone, Westlife. Just to think, Boyzone, the only band ever through generations to be a serious threat to Val Doonican were heading for longer woolier jumpers and semi retirement and he (Simon Cowell) had a grip on his babies. And we were the babysitters. He was in diaper heaven. Herein began his stampede and complete domination of the pop charts. He had previously done an amazing job with Robson and Jerome, more of which I’ll recite later, had some continued success with 5ive but now he had the one that he thought would do it for him. Unlike Robson and Jerome who took a lot of persuading, kidnapping, harrasing all by his own admission as they were successful actors and already stars. Simon needed them to make a record , they couldn’t give a toss!

Writing about this all (and they’ll be other stories I’m sure!) makes me smile and makes me understand even more what was it that made Simon Cowell different from the rest. He doesn’t understand the word no! To make it even more hilarious is that we managed to get some interviews for Westlife although we needed Ronan Keating in there as well doing the interviews, that maybe swung it a little as he was ‘famous pretty’ instead of ‘who the fuck are you pretty.’  Hell, what I am saying. None of them are pretty to me. I’d like to think though that the radio stations were doing it for us and not for Westlife or for Simon Cowell. In those days people knew who we were when you called the radio stations and hadn’t a clue who Simon was. How funny is that, if he had tried to call people directly they probably wouldn’t have taken his call!

Simon Cowell 2009 NME Cover

I haven’t read the whole article but I’m sure by later today, I will add fuel to the fire. Simon Cowell on the front cover of theNME ( New Musical Express, what was once a highly influential paper for discerning record buyers. Repeat WAS) It created intrigue, I didn’t buy a record because of a review but I was curious enough to want to hear it and make my own mind up as how to dispose of my precious disposable income. It was there to whet our appetites and were slavering, hungry and ready for our nourishment. Now the NME matters not and they have splashed the nemesis on the front cover. Nothing is any different from the last five years that Simon Cowell has reigned and all things Simon Cowell continue to dominate the ‘coveted’ Christmas Number One.

First question, why is it coveted? Maybe once it meant something, now it’s a forgone conclusion. And before you jump up and tell me Rage against the Machine pipped him to the post for the first time in half a decade, so what? It won’t change anything, it’s an outcry, we’ve had them against wars, politicians,you name it we’ve voiced it. The public gets on it’s high horse and voices it’s opinion. Within a week Joe X Factor Winner will be outselling Rage against the Machine, everyone will be full of festive bird and trimmings and it’ll be buysiness as usual.
And so to the NME article. And let’s be totally honest here, written to get people to buy a paper they no longer care about. Because the nemesis is on the cover. Whatever you think of Simon… he is bigger than Swine Flu and far more contagious. He changed the way we watched television (we being a generalization) and he changed the way people bought records. He got them to watch his programs and to buy his records,  whereas most recently they bought very few records and didn’t give a fuck about music on television. Arise M(MUSIC????) Televison??

Let us debate.From said article…

Simon Cowell believes he single handedly managed to save the industry from ruin, he says in a new interview with NME. Things were looking pretty grim before he started with the two shows ( X Factor and Britain’s got Talent ). Cowell says and the fact that he managed to get such high ratings on TV boosted interest in the music the contenders on the show made. One thing lead to another, and more and more people started going into music stores to buy music, which would not have happened otherwise, the star says.

“The music industry was in a huge decline. What I would argue in my defense is that shows like Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor have actually got people more interested in music again and are sending more people into record stores. We haven’t seen this kind of uplift in years,” Cowell tells NME. In making this statement, he also comes to contradict other stars who claim that these two shows only bring out the worst in the industry, in that they artificially promote manufactured pop stars who have no staying power – this, despite the fact that some of those who appeared on the show have gone to sell millions of albums all over the world, like Leona Lewis and Susan Boyle.

Correct, more people did go in to record stores to buy music, but not music as such Simon, they bought YOUR music. He says he single handedly saved the industry from ruin. Again I beg to differ, he saved SONY/BMG from ruin and for that they pay him more than most labels turn over nowadays. I don’t think he saved Universal from the disastrous year they have just had and the massive sums of money they had to be seen to invest in new albums from U2 etc to look like they were playing the game. Which when all is said and done is the incessant, mindless game of catch up. He’s already lapped you several times over, you’re on the starting blocks…….No particular place to go! While Simon Cowell saved the music industry, Universal laid off a bunch of people. Where lies the saviour in that? And  next year… there will be even more redundancies. The music industry is incapable of keeping up with him, because he is more gifted than them in knowing what the  people want. And now he has the only shows that people watch that have music on. He can pick and chose what wannabes and what stillhavetobes are on it. He is the only kid in town, the only one with that choice.
Call it the dumbing down of record buyers, call it apathy, call it what the fuck you want but nobody does it anywhere near as successfully as Simon Cowell and every A and R person in the music business wishes they had and ounce of his midas touch. But they don’t . They cannot lead and they cannot follow, they scratch their combined heads and they have no answer. Simon Cowell will dominate for as long as he chooses to , there is no deposition in sight and he ain’t abdicating. He is too powerful. He started the battle and he won the war. In the music industry people used to be constantly looking over their shoulders to see where the competition was, from wherever. That’s what made it exciting, everyone vying for pole position. You pip someone, they pip you. We were a nation of pippers, now he’s Pip Central, he’s piped the lot of ‘em and they’re all totally pipped off.

Where is the competition, where lies the challenge?  He’s so adept at it now, it can’t be demanding. He’s even working with Clive Davis and Simon Fuller who also know the ropes better than the competition. All for one and one for all… these Three Muskateers all sit under the BMG empire.

I worked there and with all them for 7 years in the 90’s and directly with the two Simons. Clive Davis probably didn’t know me from Adam and he never invited me to his pre Grammy’s Party. For that I am eternally grateful, I hate puking at parties. In those days it was a different set up and a different level of success. Like most record companies, they had success and then they didn’t. I saw Simon Cowell rise from nothing and I know what he has that his competitors don’t have……. belief, resilience and an ability to deliver, consistently. More than the rest of them put together. You may not like it but you can never underestimate the power he has in knowing how to do it. He may appear he’s bitching about RATM but he’s just winding everyone up, he’ll love the fact that he creates so much controversy that a nation must rise against him

The first of many rants I suspect. I will return but for now, Merry Christmas Simon.

As it’s all anyone is talking about here in the Tampa Bay area I thought I’d make a start on a series of U2 blogs. I just got a note from my old pal Neil who’s about to step on a plane so no doubt we will end discussing this even more over the coming weeks. (Neilstorey.blogspot.com.) In fact Neil goes back even further than I do with U2. And that’s nearly 30 years. He was responsible for persuading myself and my then lodger, Mark Radcliffe to drag ourselves out on a  filthy wet saturday night to see them supporting Wah Heat at what was then the Art College in Manchester( was it 1981?) It was soon to become the ‘Poly’ and  where they played several times when I was working with them and where I still hold the record guest list (106 people when I took most of Granada TV along to see them.)

Merely mention U2 to me and so many memories come flooding back. I dread to think of how many shows I did with them in the early 80’s and watched them blossom and flourish until they finally exploded. You can’t ever imagine the belief that band had in themselves from the very beginning. Even now they helped inspire me as much as anyone to write my book.

Last night was special. My friend Darrin who did pretty much everything other than write the damn book, Insights from the Engine Room really wanted to go, I was hot and had been all week so the thought of standing in a field for hours sounded like a lot of work. A 72,000 record breaking audience is pretty smelly in this humidity but I thought I should do the decent thing and see if I could get us some tickets. I sent a note to Paul McGuinness their manager and tickets, backstage passes and hospitality was provided the same as it has every year since they managed to make a living without me. I stood on the mixing desk and watched in amazement. I amazed myself, I should be used to it all by now. Somehow I doubt I ever will be.

I’m still tired as it was one hell of an exhausting but fulfilling night so I’ll get to bed and come back and write some more later. And don’t you dare wake me.

Lots more to say but as they say in showbiz, I have a deadline. I have to get all my relevant press pack and some more together.

I won’t be able to avoid ranting on about it because the truth is that as a novice I have thoroughly enjoyed myself, so much in fact that I’m not stopping here. I’ll probably get wrapped up in Twitter and uptweet current info as it seems all the craze.

What’s it about? Well it’s about me, what did you expect it to be about! Here’s an excerpt from the intro that I condensed down from War and Peace length. I needed a long intro because I’ve got wear a lot of T shirts and I have a lot to say. I’ve mapped out the internet cafes along the beach and, ‘I’ve started so I’ll finish.’

Here’s a sneak preview, sneak away

It still wasn’t enough, I want to write a book that I’d read. I want it to include some stories, be entertaining, have humour but I want there to be something people could learn from the stories. I wanted them to benefit and to learn as I had learned from the people I had worked with.

I wanted them to see the mistakes these people had made, the opportunities that came their way and the pivotal moments that had both motivated and inspired me. I wanted them to see that no matter who you are, shit happens!

Difficult but challenging, I definitely was on a mission now. How long should it be, what should I cover, what will I call it? I was starting to feel invincible now, I’d made the decision, I’m writing a book! I started to think about the cover. What should it be?

That’s it! …it’ll have me on the cover in a Super hero costume, maybe ‘Shitman.’

I scribbled some more notes and identified the things I wanted to cover, one page, two pages. There was too much, time to prioritize.

There may be more, let’s see how we do with this first. It has to begin, at the beginning. It has to introduce me from my childhood to my adulthood but we need to cover my in between hood because my in between hood was good.

Book should be out soon, even quicker if I get round to replacing my laptop and a spot of writing in more exotic places than my kitchen.

So here as a sprightly baby of fifteen years old did I get to meet the great Led Zeppelin…

I had tickets to see Led Zeppelin which my friend Ken had bought. They were playing the Free Trade Hall, June 1969 and I could barely contain myself with the excitement. Led Zeppelin in my home town just prior to world domination and I had a seat so near the front I could watch every Jimmy Page grimace and every Robert Plant gyration. I could smell the sweat off Bonzo as he thrashed his drums like a maniac. John Paul Jones’ bass lines went up my leg and in to my belly. This was something else, this was rock heaven. If the bass got so heavy and made me sick at least it was rock puke.

After the show we waited around and asked the old bloke in the foyer (I think they call them security now) if we could take a couple of posters down from the wall. He politely agreed and there we stood with two glorious Zeppelin posters, the one with the orange Zeppelin on the cover.

They didn’t sell merchandise back then so this glorious poster I had before me was set to become a major rarity and worth a small fortune. I got divorced, from wife and poster and the rest is history, or it could have been. Farewell my retirement fund.

We sneaked back in to the empty auditorium and watched as the roadies packed up the equipment. Now this was rock and roll, this was serious. The Marshall speaker stacks were huge, I would have done anything to touch them, even if one could just fall over and land on me. Oh for the blood of Zeppelin.

Suddenly out of nowhere Robert Plant appeared, leant down and nodded at us, ‘Want me to sign those fellahs?’ he asked. Dumb question Robbo, I kept calm secretly wanting to make him feel the pop star. No sooner were we staring at his autograph with deep admiration of the task completed than he waved us to the stage door. Now he wanted to see if we would like to meet the other guys.

I looked at Ken, he looked at me, we looked at Robert (by now he was Robert) I shuffled and wriggled in my Levis to make sure nothing I had expected was going on down there.

Is this for real? I pinched myself, it hurt. This was for real so why couldn’t I believe it? We had been summoned by royal appointment, His Royal Highness, the right honorable Robert Fucking Plant! If the dog had bollock then this was it!!

Led Zeppelin wanted to see us, no one else in the crowd, just us! And never have I EVER used so many exclamation marks in one paragraph! This had to be one of the twelve dreams of Dr Sardonicus, My Dreams of Milk and Honey, The Greatest Story Ever Told.

And I’m not done yet, I will conclude this fab day next time round.

Here’s a snippet..

In 1980 I was working with U2, I’d been taking them in and out of radio stations prior to the release of their first single, ‘11 o’ clock tick tock’ and trying to get them in for interviews wherever I could. They released 3 singles in the six months from May to October and we had been working relentlessly driving up and down the motorways to talk to whoever would have them. And then more of the same upfront of the release of their debut album, ‘Boy.’

You hoped all the hard work would pay off and that opportunities would come your way, you’d take some risks, take a chance on something. It might go pear shaped but you’d never know if you didn’t give it a go. It’s the reason you try it in the first place.

If you believe it enough you won’t need convincing and you won’t need to convince others.

November that year was incredible. There were a few of us at Island Records who believed in the band and we were all convinced they could be huge. Rob and Neil in the press department had done an unbelievable job getting journalists along to see them play and were starting to get some really good feedback. All their efforts culminated in an NME (New Musical Express) front cover at the start of the year.

At that time there had still been no significant breakthrough with any national radio or television exposure and we all knew we would struggle to survive on press alone. In order to maintain the great press coverage they (the press) would need to see others pick up on the band, and to get radio and television interested you needed the press, it was catch 22. We were at the crossroads, something needed to give. We needed to get that break otherwise it would be impossible to keep the momentum going.

I received some amazing news. Tony Hale the Radio One producer who was based in Manchester and therefore a contact of mine, loved the band. Were they available to record a session for the Peter Powell show? WERE THEY AVAILABLE……Damn right they were available! Around the same time, maybe a week or so sooner I got confirmation that Granada TV’s network kids show ‘Get it together’ wanted to book them. I couldn’t believe my luck….all my Christmas’s had come at once. I say luck but in all honesty I had been working hard on the band for most of the year, we all had and felt we deserved this break. This was the most significant result we’d had up until now from national radio and TV in the UK and now we were really starting to get others to believe in them. At this point we were starting to think, just maybe?

The bottom line, will it make everyone what they are used to earning from a U2 album? Many, many unanswered questions. Time will tell and it’ll give us a sure fire indication of the times ahead. Once the accountants work out what Bruce and U2 have sold it will tell us a lot. Everyone in the industry will be watching, the goalposts have changed.

And what about the tour, where will touring be when they roll out? The promoters will have forked out a fortune and paid up well in advance I would imagine. With the economy in free fall will people just be able to afford it, no matter how good a show it may be? I doubt if anyone has the answer and they’ll all be watching nervously.

Downsizing, it has to be the way forward. I don’t think anyone can realistically tour in the way they did either. Touring has to be affordable for all, not least of all the fans. If there are no bums on seats then there’s no point touring at any level but of course touring will continue and now is the time to protect the endangered species before it’s too late.

Touring has been a very lucrative income stream lately for bands. It’s also money they get to keep when they are at the top end and not in need of tour support, something the record companies would love to change. If they aren’t making on the record they need to get some return on their investment and that’s why they are exploring other income streams.

There we go again, return on investment. That’s the bottom line, what you get back against what you’ve spent. Nothing more nothing less. Nothing to do with the act and building something, allowing them to develop and getting a return on their investment. In time. We used to call it careers but I’m not sure it’s a word the music industry uses anymore. Talk of careers and you’ll get a vacant look. We want it now!

I meant to write about Factory records, so what happened there?