[This is an expanded version of a story initially published in BASCA's magazine The Works, issue 40.]
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| Simon Napier-Bell |
Simon
Napier-Bell is waiting in the lobby of the hotel in Shepherd's Bush
where he usually stays when he is visiting the British capital. It is
his last day in Europe before flying back to Thailand where he spends
most of his time nowadays. He is in London for some serious business
– putting the last touches to his forthcoming book, his fourth, in
which he attempts to document no less than three centuries of the
global music industry.
As
he just celebrated his 75th
anniversary, the former Yardbirds, T. Rex, Wham! and Japan manager is
in good form and in talkative mood. Before the interview starts, he
makes a brief reference to The Works. “The literate people who are
interested in the music business read BASCA's magazine,” he quips.
And from then on, it is almost impossible to stop the voluble – and
often controversial – chronicler of the music industry.
His
new book, titled 'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay', is named after a 19th
Century vaudeville song, the authorship of which has been under
dispute. “I think it is a jolly
good song,” says Napier-Bell, who was inspired by the history of
the song. For him, it encompasses what the music industry is – a
vaudeville, with an upbeat tempo and a controversial background (not
to mention that it was originally created in a Louisiana brothel).
“In
the book,” he explains, “I have been analysing the business from
when music became a commodity. And going from there to today made me
change my attitude on things. The music industry has never been doing
anything other than finding ways to make something that fitted the
business models of the times. In the 19th
Century artists would play musicals, which were seven or eight
minutes long, and then songs became three-minute long when the
singles came around. But songs were also presented in 32-bar format
sold via sheet music. That format was created to sell sheet music. So
there has always been a delineation of what the business side wanted
and it was fulfilled by the creative people.”
Napier-Bell
is adamant that creators have constantly been adopters of new
technologies, and even if they have most of the time been on the
wrong side of the business deals, they always found ways to express
their creativity. “Creators have always adjusted to technology and
any artist who grumbles about the business should go in the park,”
he says. “You move into the business and it's a balance between
commerce and creativity, with a compromise in the middle. You had
artists who had to compromise with capitalism in a way they never
thought they would and the role of the manager was to bring the two
sides together and this is still valid today.”
“Artists
are usually very shrewd and are quite savvy about the industry,”
says Napier-Bell. “Stars are very unique people, they come along
and have a certain amount of talent and are obsessed with showing off
and insecure by doing so. They always compromise with the industry
because that's their way of dealing with the system.”
Financially useless
The
music industry, he adds, is the product of three centuries of
evolution – with an acceleration in the early 60s and the era of
the modern business to the heydays of selling CDs and now to today's
digital disruption. The beginning of all the process was the
recognition of value in creativity, with the Statute of Anne, which
bestowed the ownership of the creation to the author and created
modern intellectual property rights. The existence of a property
right allowed transactions and eventually led to the modern business
as we know it, which has become an integral part of the capitalist
system, functioning in an open market economy. “Name me a better
example than music as a financially useless product which has to be
replaceable and defunct quickly,” he smiles. “But the profits are
huge when it works.”
He
adds, “Record companies want to sell plastic. It's a great
business: They bought plastic and sold it with a thousand per cent
markup! But the business had to be run by people who loved music to
make sure that the music on the plastic was good so that the public
would buy it. So there were some good people [in the labels].”
The
real change in the business has been the growth of the live music
sector alongside the recorded music business. For Napier-Bell,
recorded music is a by-product of the live performance rather than
the other way around. “We needed the record to create the market
that you sold yourself to,” he explains. “The fact that we were
cheated by labels was not important because it was the advertisement
for performances and you had to get the record deal to get the
advertisement. But once you had done the deal you were on your own.
Now labels are chasing 360 deals.”
Napier-Bell's
vision is based on 50 years in the business, mostly as a manager of
global artists such as Wham! or Japan. “I
don't like management much,” he drops drily. Coming from someone
who is part of an exclusive club of mavericks who created the
modern British music business, the statement can be surprising.
Napier-Bell and the likes of Brian Epstein, Andrew Loog Oldham, Kit
Lambert, Peter Grant, among others, set new rules and invented new
processes for the music business as they went along, and,
occasionally, became more famous than their acts. He elaborates, “You
start up by mainly doing out what seems to be common sense. When they
[the artists] are successful, then you can make a lot of money out of
it, and then they become quite an aggravation.”
He
adds, “With
Japan, it took four albums to have a success. I don't see how this
could happen today. For a few years they were extremely influential.
David Sylvian was a reluctant star. I made them huge in Japan, but
when he became a star in England he hated it. He came to me and said,
'I do not want to be a pop star, I want to create, earn enough
money.' I told him that that I don't know how to do. He was over
intellectual, but he had a good brain.”
Moving away from music
From
management to writing was a transition that happened naturally for
him. Napier-Bell says writing is an old passion of his, dating back
to when he was a teenager, hitch-hiking across the USA in the late
50s, after a stint in Canada where he expected to become a jazz
musician. “It was a failure,” he notes. “When I was
hitch-hiking, I wanted to be a writer but nobody wants to read what a
20-year-old wants to write. But that led me to the film business and
then to the music business.”
He
continues: “My parents asked me, 'what do you wanna be when grow
up?'. Me? I said I want to be a dentist and then realised that you
had to study hard. And then said music, which sounded quite nice.
That's why I went into this profession.”
He
admits being a huge fan of short stories, especially those of
Somerset Maugham, so around the age of 40, he started writing, and in
1998 he published his first published book, 'You Don't Have to Say
You Love Me' (Ebury Press), about his experience as a manager. He
followed it in 2001 with 'Black Vinyl, White Powder' (Ebury Press),
in which described the influence of drugs in the music industry. “I
found that I liked writing,” he says. “'Black Vinyl' was a best
seller and had amazing reviews. It changed my mind about writing. And
it happened as I wanted to slowly move away from music.”
About
few years later, in 2006, Napier-Bell published his account of the
Wham! Adventure in 'I'm Coming to Take You to Lunch: A Fantastic Tale
of Boys, Booze and How Wham! Were Sold to China' (Warner Books). With
this new book, to be released in June 2014, Napier-Bell says his goal
was to write the ultimate book about the music industry, and then he
came to the realisation that it would be as difficult to put together
as it would be to read. So instead he selected what he believes are a
number of key events or period that define the music industry,
starting with the Statute of Anne which established in 1710 what
became the first legislation on copyright in the modern age.
“It
seem such an impossible thing to write a thing about the whole music
industry and I kind to pulled it off,” he comments. “I researched
through thousands of books. I had to find a way through it, and
that's how I came up with a series of stories that would give a good
feel of the evolution of the business. It took three years. It was a
massive undertaking.”
He
adds that he paid special attention to the writing. “The way I
write is to make it flow nicely, but it does not mean that it does
not take a long time. When I write I put in huge volume, write
without too much thoughts and then I have the treasurable job of
editing. I probably re-edit each sentence 500 times. I am an editor,
my dad was a film director, so you learn to trim down. The point
about my writing is that each sentence should sound like I'm talking.
I try to get the rhythm right, so when you read it it flows in your
brain like music, but that takes a lot of editing and re-writing.”
Using crowdfunding to finance the book
One
of the interesting aspects of this book is the way it came about.
Napier-Bell searched for a publisher for his book but says he could
not get any interest. “Publishers told me 'We do not do books like
this, we only do best-sellers' so I had to try something new,” he
explains. That's when he was put in touch with Unbound, a publishing
house that finances its projects through crowd-sourcing. So lo and
behold, Napier-Bell set up the process in motion and asked for
pledges from the public, asking for £20,000 (disclosure: this writer
pledged £20).
“This
is not really something new because subscription publishing has
always been popular. With this system, you buy advance copies and
that pays for cost of printing. I calculated that £20,000 was what
you needed to print 2,000 copies to get it started. And I wanted some
promotion too. That's what Unbound does.”
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| The Works' 40th edition |
Napier-Bell
hopes that the book will dispel what he think is the main
misconception in the public and the media – and also within the
industry – about the real shape of the music industry. “The
[music] industry makes more money year on year, but a lot of people
confuse it with the record companies' business. There were no record
companies in 1900 and it was a flourishing business. Record companies
will go! Or to survive they will have to become music companies and
develop new talent.”
If
you push him further, he describes record companies as “cry babies”
for constantly lamenting the drop in recorded music sales. “The
total worldwide money generated by the popular music industry has
been growing,” he explains. “The main increase last year was from
music publishers due to increasing radio stations online playing
their music. The public do not mind spending money and people will
always find ways to make money circulate.”
In
his time as a manager, Napier-Bell has had a history of conflicting
with record company executives, but surprisingly he professes not
“hating them” even though he calls them “the enemy.” He
explains, “I have a love-hate relationship with record companies.
I've had some jolly good meetings over lunch and drugs with label
executives. I loved my time. I never hated record companies per se
but as corporate entities you have to come to hate them: They are so
greedy and incompetent.”
Having a good time
Napier-Bell
makes no apologies for having had a good time during his tenure in
the industry. “This industry, from the beginning, was driven by
people who artists would call crooks but who were ambitious
self-centred people liking money and who would move things. The world
depends on unreasonable people to make progress. And there's very few
in this business. And the more I look at it, the more I like this
business, including the crooks and the rip offs, the self-centred
money makers and the ambitionists (sic),” he says. “But those
were the guys who changed things, who moved the industry. It was
greed all the time, including Dylan and [manager Albert] Grossman.
It's the perfect example, and it made Dylan successful. Having
engineered the system, he got it right.”
One
thing that Napier-Bell does not like is boring people, and he says
he's seen a few in record companies. “Boring people will remain
boring 'til they die and there's always more boring people to replace
them,” he reflects. It is therefore easy to figure out who, between
Atlantic co-founder Ahmet Ertegun and former EMI owner Guy Hands,
Napier-Bell would bat for. “Take Ahmet Ertegun: He love the way of
life, and he could talk the talk. But you could see from the first
days that Guy Hands loved himself more than music. He said if artists
didn't like it they could fuck off. If there is one thing you should
never do is alienate artists.”
As
the interview comes to an end, Napier-Bell drops, matter of factly,
“In a way, I am an imposter.” An imposter? “Well, you see what
I mean,” he chuckles. “Like for most things in life, I consider
myself being an imposter, and I wheeled my way through quite well,
don't you think?”
[Typed
while listening to David Sylvian's works in shuffle mode. Sorry, but
Wham! does not do it for me...]