NOT PART OF

AN OUTSIDER ON THE INSIDE

I’ve often said I never really felt part of the music industry. Whenever I went to a record company I felt I was visiting the industry. Whenever I walked out I felt like I was leaving it again. It’s how I’ve always felt about most things; it’s why I’m more comfortable living abroad. Belonging doesn’t feel comfortable; being from somewhere else does.

It’s not surprising I never got any music business awards, they judged me rightly; I never really entered into the swing of things. On the other hand, the Gay & Lesbian Awards called me a dozen or so years ago to say they were going to give me Gay Media Person of the Year.

I agreed, but then Paul O’Grady also agreed. Since Paul was better known than me, they gave the award to him instead and changed mine to Senior Gay Media Person. Never mind, the evening was fun − a big table and lots of friends − but like the music industry, the gay awards people wanted everyone to take it seriously and talk about fighting for gay rights.

I’d never campaigned for gay rights in my life; in fact I think I preferred gay life in the old days when it was more secretive. It felt fraudulent to be seen as some sort of gay freedom fighter. In my teens I was lucky enough to find myself gay and since then I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. Why should I get an award for that?

It was the same with the music industry. I took it too flippantly to get awards; either things were fun or I didn’t bother with them. But in the end they sort of half gave me one.

In the 1980s, Jazz Summers and I had the idea of getting Wham! into China, It was intended as a way to jump-start their promotion in America. And it worked a treat. A concert in Beijing, a couple of hundred camera crews, journalists and photographers from around the world, and hey presto we were on all the news channels in America 24/7. A month later we were booking Wham! a US stadium tour.

It was a mega-scam, a management sleight-of-hand. And for that I would have been delighted to get an award. Instead they wanted to give it to us for ‘opening new markets’, which had never been in our minds Anyway,  they didn’t want Jazz and me on stage, just George and Andrew.

When Jazz protested, it was grudgingly decided that although we wouldn’t actually be presented with anything we could go up with them. I would have preferred not to. My reason for spending two years negotiating Wham!’s visit to Beijing had nothing to do with opening new markets for the British music industry. I’d spent eighteen months travelling backwards and forwards to China for just one reason - I enjoyed it. There were no emails then and no self-dial international calls. I was free. I spent ten days every month circling the globe with a Pan Am round-the-world first-class ticket – just three days in Beijing, the rest in Thailand and Acapulco, mainly on the beach, probably doing more to earn my gay award than any music business one.

But back to “not really feeling part of the music business ”.

I’m not sure why I feel that. I love the music business – I love its games, its treachery, its money, its fun, its potential for instant success, even its potential for instant disaster. And I love music. What I don’t like is the coporate aspect of it – the profit-before-everything attitude that fuels the major record companies.

Unfortunately, the major corporations amount to 60% of the industry. Sony. Universal, Warner, BMG, plus perhaps the collection societies and the two big agencies, William Morris and CAA; these are effectively the industry’s governement. They are more to do with the distribution and selling of music than its creation. They set the rules and are mainly concerned with finance. And I don’t mind that at all, because for the music industry to exist it needs a steady flow of money and proper governance. But don’t ask me to be a civil servant, it’s just not my thing. The creative side of the industry is the part I love – not the side that gives out awards.

What I’ve enjoyed most is bringing new artists to the top, because new artists are subversive; they’re endlessly thinking up ways of getting themselves noticed, looking for ways to trick the industry into taking them in. And thereby lies the flaw. Because by signing a record contract, artists switch from being subversvie to being supportive of the system. Well, of course they do - it gives them the audience they crave and makes them rich. But afterwards, although managing them becomes more profitable, it becomes less fun. They usually hate themelves for compromsing with the corporate world and become more difficult to deal with.

The same goes for all the great indie companies – Atlantic, Track, Casablanca, Sire, Stiff – all of them fun, subersive and chaotic. Until they sell out to a major and become nothing but a name to be stuck on the label of a new record, their creative fire extinguished by corporate compromise.

Managers, though, don’t sign to record companies. They’re matchmakers, bringing hopeful young artists into the corporate fold, then helping them survive it. Managers need to remain suspicious of the system and its motives, and keep their distance. For them, the corporate industry should always be seen as an adversary.

Best to be no part of it.

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