Where are you taking us now, music biz?

So there I was all settled  down last night just checking out Facebook before slumping on the couch and up popped this instant message. It was from Sam and it said ‘ What makes a great debut album.’ One hell of a question I have to say but what an unbelievable topic to explore. What does make a great debut album indeed?

I could pontificate endlessly but let’s face it, and I make no pretense here, times change. Understatement of the year I might add. Maybe we should give 1967/1968 as an answer , what an amazing period, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Moby Grape, The Band, Captain Beefheart, Traffic and The Doors. Not bad for great debut albums and all in just under two years, eh?

It’s not just about having a great debut album, it’s about being an artist and having greatness in you.  When I was growing up so many of the people I admired aspired to greatness and if you were a fan you knew it was only a matter of time before they reached that.  You bought their album because maybe you’d seen them live, you’d heard them on the radio and you liked them. If you bought the album and there were a few fillers what the hell, we’ve all been there, correct? But more than anything you believed in them and they too believed in you, the fan. They didn’t wan to short change you, they chose this path to earn their living and they felt it necessary to give value for money. They were hungry and they were committed, they put their heart and soul in to it. And not only that, right through the sixites and up until the nineties the record company was committed too. They would send you back in to the studio if they thought what you brought them was unsatisfactory. They signed you because they knew you could do it and if what they heard was substandard then, go do it again. It’ was a bit like being kept behind at school .

Labels were proud of what they released and they didn’t want anything substandard on their roster either . I wasn’t alone in collecting records back then on Island and Electra. I knew that most of the time I’d like what I heard. They set standards and if it was a new band and it was on one of those labels I’d be the first in to the store to listen to it. I was excited. labels got excited and the artist was excited to hear what the media had to say about them. They were prepared to be judged.

Nowadays it’s all changed. You could say no one gives a fuck but naturally that would be a generalization. There are some labels that genuinely care but there are a bunch sticking stuff out to suit a demographic knowing they can sell X amount and far more importantly, not lose their job. It’s about safety, if they can’t or don’t know how to market it then they won’t sign it because if they do they are leaving themselves exposed. It beggars the question, do we have the talent at the labels that we once had. I’m bound to say no but just work it out for yourselves, are you getting what you want or are you getting what they think you deserve? Is it a discerning audience, I think not. People growing up don’t really know what they are missing. If you’re on TV then they think you’re famous. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it a thousand times, YOU’RE NOT. You’re notorious.  Rapists, murderers, terrorists and child molesters are on the television, are those twats famous? Though even I wouldn’t tag today’s ‘stars’ quiet that badly.

For me it’s a massive point of debate. Where does the hunger come from now, where is the desire to dazzle. What does the artist look for when they deliver their work. It’s a thousand questions and it’s a million answers. I’ll be back to discuss much more on this. It doesn’t seem right we stand back and let it happen but sadly we’re mostly powerless. The people who need to care don’t and those don’t never will. Feels like we’re in a minority and the force feeding to the masses has turned us in to arena addicts.

Where are our gladiators when we need them?

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, record companies, Risk, creativity, Island Records, record companies

5ive to Westlife

It was late 1990’s and Simon Cowell had had success in the UK with a boy band  called 5ive. My promotion company handled their regional promotion for the duration and had them out doing interviews and the like. They’d had a number of hits and now Simon was approaching the arena of ‘manufactured pop,’ something he’d experienced with Sinitta much earlier but never with a level of consistency. And he was about to do what only he thought possible, take it over. He’d seen what his future business partner Simon Fuller had achieved with The Spice Girls and nearer to home what his BMG colleagues had done with Take That. Secretly he wished he’d had that to get his teeth in to, publicly he made everyone know he would! Even earlier than that he greatly admired what Pete Waterman, his earliest mentor had done with Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. Waterman created stars, in a pure pop way where he and his cohorts, Aitkin and Stock wrote the songs, produced the records, styled the artists and groomed them for the media. And for Simon Cowell the world beckoned, he wanted to create bigger stars. More of them and more of the time.

Loius Walsh who had managed the Irish boy band Boyzone approached him with the new act he was managing with Ronan Keating, their singer. They were called Westlife. Boy bands were starting to have an impact on the charts and Simon’s determination alone, together with what I already knew about him told me we were in for a full on, slam dunk, brain battering of how we WERE going to make this huge. not my cup of tea but hardly the point.

One morning in who cares when I was sat at my desk when the phone went. ‘Simon Cowell for you.’ came the holler across my office from Lee my right hand man. ‘Hi Tony it’s Vanya, I have Simon for you.’ I’d never had a problem with Simon, I always liked the guy, like I said previously he kept us promotion people on our toes. Sure we argued and agreed to disagree but I’ve never rated anyone in my life where you haven’t had a disagreement.  If you don’t believe how do you expect anyone else to? Simon demanded his records got attention and as I always I told him, if people thought they were crap he needed to know that. He wasn’t changing, and neither the fuck was I, I’d managed to survive the previous 15 years without him and my credibility was seriously being challenged by The Teletubbies and Zig and Zag. Frankly I didn’t rate them as songwriters, I much preferred Dylan. I knew he wasn’t calling to see if I’d had a good weekend. It was even previous to the marketing meeting and my hearing Westlife, so the conversation was one way. How could I defend, criticize, applaud anything I hadn’t heard. One nil to Simon Cowell.

To be continued, miss it at your peril!

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, record companies, Risk, View from the room

When U2 comes to town

It’s incredible to see the media go in to free fall when the U2 show comes to town. As an exercise in how to promote your show no one does it better and no one will ever do it better. It’s close to an invasion, no matter what may be going on in the world they literally command centre stage. U2 is the number one news story. In a day when records, sorry CD sales are at an all time low it’s the only way you can hope to trigger off what meagre sales are out there. Let them know you’re here. And when it comes to record sales even U2 are finding it hard going, the public has not fallen in love with their latest album/ CD. However,  wild horses wouldn’t keep those same people away from the live show.

The band are taking plenty of flack for the carbon emissions from taking this gargantuan beast on the road and you can understand why. Personally though, I believe  The Edge when he says they will offset that carbon footprint in some way. They’d probably already thought about it long before all the knives came out.  Unfortunately at around the same time he bought 156 acres on a cliff in Malibu overlooking the Pacific Ocean to build an eco friendly  home. Well five in fact, his own 10,000 square foot palace and another four to flog. Nice work if you can get it! He does want to make it his main homestead though and having seen the place I think I would too! Needless to say the activists came out in force stating that to build whatever he was building they would need to flatten a part of the cliff to build an access road.

No matter what anyone says about U2, whether it’s the new album, the carbon non friendly size of the tour or anything else for that matter the one thing you can’t ignore is the experience almost every single person who attends the show takes home. For them it’s worth every penny. U2 bring them a happiness that a lot of other bands don’t and for them it’s the best night of their lives. Paul McGuinness  has been quoted as saying they don’t break even until the back end of the US tour so you cannot argue about their desire to give people an experience second to none. The Edge on the edge. Of a cliff.

I don’t think the tour will have a significant effect on their record sales either and I’m sure they know that better than anyone. Their motivation will be their desire (no pun intended) to give something back to the people who have stuck with them forever, it’ll be trying to let them experience something unique, something completely different…….to anything. Add to that the corporate, footballer world flocking to the U2 show as the place to be seen and we have ‘the event’. It’s kinda funny too, what about those who haven’t seen a live show before? Where do they go from here, anything is going to seem sub standard after Claw Wars!

And where do U2 go from here, the return of The Claw? I don’t think so , it won’t be anywhere other than rest for a while and I think we can all allow them that indulgence! But what next, where can you go. Personally I think it’ll be stripped right down and four guys will take their songs to the masses. U2 have reached such a level now that being the ‘hottest ticket’ they could do anything. They’ve earned it. They haven’t earned it because of a gigantic claw and a production of epidemic proportion, they earned it from 30 plus years on the road. They’ve earned it from playing every tiny club that wanted to book them to every fan who wanted to see them. They’ve earned it from signing every autograph for every one of those fans who believed in them enough to give them a chance to do this. And through it all they stuck at it. They posed for every picture with every fan no matter how exhausted they were after giving their all in a performance, and for many years to under a hundred people and not a hundred thousand. They stepped out front to meet and greet the fans for as long as it was safe to do so. They paid their dues, they have earned it.

For me U2, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Bruce or Led Zeppelin don’t have to prove anything to me or anyone else. They earned it, damn right they earned it. It’s called a work ethic and it’s called graft. Blood, sweat and tears. It’s called taking chances and making mistakes and it’s called entertainment. It isn’t about any one tour, it’s about understanding why you came in to this business and giving people something they have earned. The opportunity to take their hard earned cash and spend it how they want to. And if that is on two hours of a thrill of a lifetime who are we to judge?  When entertainers get this big let’s not lose site of the fact that they are still meant to entertain. It’s what they do and it’s what they should always do.

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Risk, Uncategorized, David Bowie, led zeppelin, touring, U2, u2 360 tour

Island daze

I miss Island Records but I don’t miss record companies, Island was in a class of it’s own, its a tough one to describe…..you really did have to be there. Now I’m standing from the rooftops and shouting, ‘I was there, tough luck if you weren’t!’

My friend Neil met up with Chris Blackwell, Island Record’s founder last week and it got us talking about those times yet again. There aren’t too many moments in anyone’s career that trigger off the most vivid of memories….. but the merest mention of Island life and we’re away! I was equally as pleased to hear that the two of them had done just the same!…….check out Neil’s blog for more about CB and Island at Neilstorey.blogspot.com

You meet a lot of people in the music industry and you meet a multitude of stars. For me I not only met them but I worked with U2, Bowie, The Police, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Bob Marley…..the list goes on, but when I talk about Island my only regret is that I never met Chris Blackwell. It was probably circumstance more than anything, he commuted between Jamaica, London and New York and I didn’t cover any radio stations there…… I don’t think he was avoiding me! That being said he played a huge role in my career, firstly as a fan of Island music and then professionally.

I can talk about growing up at Island and learning my trade as a promotions guy because I was left alone to do it, left to make my own mistakes. It was much the same script I gave anyone who came to work for me once I set up my own promotion company……go do it, if you fuck up there isn’t anything I can’t pull you out of. Make your own mistakes, I made plenty but they’re exclusive to me! If they made mistakes but identified them and recovered from them they proved themselves to be the right choice. Looking at the people who came and went I think my choices were good…..they went on to become radio presenters, form their own promotion companies, management companies…. and my intern went on to manage Coldplay! I think I emulated Chris Blackwell’s A and R policy, go with your gut instinct and believe in the people you work with. He was the Lion King, he lived in me!

In the early days Chris Blackwell was the A and R department. He found someone, he talked to them, told them how great he thought they were and how he thought he could help their career and boom…they’re signed. Prime example Bob Marley, it worked for both parties. Marley would never have been recognized and gain the popularity he did without Blackwell’s guidance and likewise CB would not have been able to attract new acts to his label if he hadn’t done such a remarkable job with Marley.

He needed to stand proud and look at what had been achieved and build his label from there.That’s the secret of a good record man. I won’t harp on about artist development, scroll down there is plenty of that but what I will say is how vital it is that you have a creative mind and an understanding for what you sign. It isn’t just the music it’s ‘can I work with these people, do we both have the same vision?’ Though Chris didn’t physically sign U2 and it’s been well documented by the man himself, it took just one meeting with them and manager Paul McGuinness to convince him of what his colleagues at Island were saying…..this lot are special. Rob Partridge and Neil Storey had worked long and hard in the early days until Nick ‘the captain’ Stewart stuck the piece of paper under them that said..come join this fabulous place that employs me.

Still to this day I think it was the perfect marriage. No label would have persisted in supporting U2 the way Chris Blackwell and Island did back then and certainly no label would have dared not to interfere. They owed the label so much in the first few years that most people would have stepped in and said ‘Oi, stop pissing my money away, this is how it’s going to be.’ Island knew how to grow with their artists…… through relationships based on mutual respect.

Filed under: Business Lessons, Journey Through The Past, Managing Creativity, record companies, Risk, Add new tag, Bob Marley, Chris Blackwell, Island Records, Neil Storey, Nick Stewart, Rob Partridge, U2

Play the music, Mr DJ

Although the record companies had music people working there they were not alone, people who were in to music were employed at all levels. If they liked music they wanted to find somewhere where they could indulge their passion and get paid at the same time. Their spare time was going to concerts, it was never seen as something they had to do just something they were grateful they could do……to them getting in free was incredible, they would only have spent their wages on doing that if they were somewhere else anyway.The people I knew in local radio were a classic example, there would rarely be a gig I attended that one, or more likely several of my media buddies wouldn’t attend.

Everyone I knew then who worked in radio were fans of both music and radio. They loved the idea of having a good local radio station and wherever possible they reflected that in the music they played. They took far more chances in their programing policy then than ever they could now. They were never going to be too daring but they would certainly play records by new artists if they fitted in to the station’s sound…obviously if they liked Slipnot or some German industrial band they weren’t going to let personal tastes influence them, and lose their jobs at the same time.

Radio station music policy now gives very little room for new artists to receive anything like the amount of exposure they need to get a hit through radio, those days are gone. I remember just before I hung up my plugging boots it would be any excuse not to play a record rather than looking for a reason to…very sad. I heard the same excuses my colleagues in press were getting. Press would say, ‘we need radio’ before we can write about it…………and radio would say ‘we need press before we can play it!!!’ Where the hell is the logic in that, surely someone can be a little adventurous, I wasn’t asking the radio stations to play anything that I didn’t see fitted in with the station sound. How can anyone new stand a chance of having a hit with an attitude like that. When you think of some of the records I promoted were ‘safe’ in the eyes of programmers, one example being Natalie Imbruglia and ‘Torn’ It became the biggest airplay single of the time…..and yet it was the first single by a new artist meaning today…..hardly any chance of getting that amount of support.

No risk from radio means no opportunity for new artists. Some people make great radio records, it shouldn’t matter that they are unknown.

Filed under: Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, Risk, airplay, independent local radio, radio station

Mistakes and how the times they were a changin’

What I remember from when I first started in the music business back in the 70’s was that record companies had ‘record people’ who worked there. I was fortunate enough to work for two labels who were run by three such people, Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert..the two guys who’s initials together made up A and M and Chris Blackwell the man who started the legendary Island Records, always my favorite label.

Island was my first outing in to the world of promotion and what a great place for an initiation. Everyone who worked there from the front desk at reception to the ladies in the canteen lived and breathed music….for them it was the best job they could have. Although I had first hand knowledge of both Island and A and M I made a great many friends at other labels and they too were there for the right reason.

When I got my first job the guy who employed me, Ray Cooper wanted to know if I was interested in music before he even interviwed me. We discussed what the job entailed, obviously but we compared notes and discovered we had similar tastes. I was used to talking music because I did it most of the time with my friends, it came naturally.Maybe that interest was what swung it for me, got me the job, after all I had no experience in selling but I had enthusiasm and passion driven by a love of music rather than a love for selling.

I think where the record companies benefited was through the experience of these people. They knew what to do with artists, they understood them and the collaboration of creative minds was a marriage made in heaven. They understood how to get the best out of their artists and were sympathetic to their needs, and artists invariably need! They didn’t force them to deliver records to satisfy their timelines and by a certain date to satisfy quarterley sales figures. They allowed them the time to make the right record…what creative process can produce thgeir best work that way? Nobody said to Picasso, paint..he just painted. You signed an artist because they had talent not because they could meet deadlines. The irony was that if they delivered a substandard record they sent them back to make a better one, so what was the point anyway ?

There wasn’t the huge turnover of staff either, they had the right people doing the right jobs, no more , no less. Somehow over the years record companies lost their way, they expanded, made mistakes but couldn’t accept that they had made those mistakes and started to unceremoniously dump everyone in order to have a more streamlined operation. In doing that they lost the very core of those people who made it work in the first place.

Filed under: Business Lessons, Journey Through The Past, mistakes, Risk, A and M, Add new tag, Chris Blackwell, downsizing in the music business, Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss, Island Records, mistakes, tony michaelides

Who did what to rock and roll?

Who did what to rock and roll indeed? Everyone is to blame, some more than others. Maybe the one area where they understood it a little better is touring, it seems to be thriving.  It shows that while the record business suffers the music business doesn’t.  Let’s begin by taking a look at record companies and see why the don’t quite have the attraction they once did.

There was the time everyone wanted a record deal, you signed and you were on your way.  Being signed to a record company meant something, it was a massive boost…..you felt invincible.  It gave you the determination to succeed…someone had spotted you, thought you had that certain something and wanted to make you successful.  It was like passing your driving test, someone had recognized you could do this and you were ready for the road.  It might be a long road, but they had the courage to stick with you, they were in it for the long haul.  They signed you because you had talent and they wanted to nurture that talent, they wanted to watch it grow. 

You were given the money you needed to make a record and maybe a little more to live on, to tour.  It was “the advance” and it did what it said it would do, it allowed you to advance, it wasn’t an instant fix….and with it came an experienced group of people to help make it happen.  Maybe you were young and lacked experience, maybe your manager needed a little guidance, some help.  All you had was talent, not a bad place to start.  The record company had that experience…where you hadn’t done it before they had and were prepared to help.  Wherever you were lacking they had people who could help. they had made mistakes, plenty of them and a lot more than anyone they’d ever signed.

The money the record company gave you was a loan and like any business they wanted a return on their investment. It’s called recouping and it means repaying…..but like any investment they didn’t expect it to happen overnight, it was a risk. They were prepared to wait ad not only did they get their money back, they got a lot more. It was a never ending circle, when you made money off one band you invested in another looking for the same return. it made good business sense and it allowed labels and acts to grow together.

Filed under: Business Lessons, Risk, artist development, record comapnies, recoupement, Risk, tony michaelides

Tony Wilson, once seen never forgotten.

Part of my brief at Island Records was to try and secure TV performances and video showings of the acts I represented. During my time as a salesman for Transatlantic and ABC Records, I had watched Tony Wilson’s career blossom from aspiring journalist and local news presenter to being pushed to the forefront in Granada TV’s quest to give Top of the Pops, the BBC’s flagship pop show a run for their money….well that was the original plan anyway! Granada’s boss David Plowright was fan of Tony’s and thought he was the man for the job. I agreed with him completely, he was the perfect person to front such a brave challenge, and Granada were the perfect TV company to take on the BBC..

 

Local television and more specifically local news programs weren’t known for championing any type of new or even established music in those days, they were just that, local news…….. but Granada has always been at the forefront when it came to being a little more adventurous. It was they who a decade earlier thought it might be a good idea to put this interesting bunch of Liverpool lads on the box, a parade of moptops called The Beatles……and a guy back then Johnny Hamp took the kind of chance no one would ever dare to today.

 

Tony Wilson to a great many of people in the north west of England was a love, hate type of guy. The first time I saw him on my local news show he made me smile, made me giggle, there was something about him that was entertaining. He was very personable too when he acknowledged me at the Marley show back in 1975. Even back then when celebrity was really only used to describe The Beatles, The Stones and Hollywood I could see how people would leer at him, shout insults and obscenities….he was our own ‘celebrity’ He had a look and a way about him that impressed some and pissed off others.  Certain characters would make a point of pulling away from their own crowd and go up to him purely to tell him they thought he was crap….why because he was on TV and they weren’t? In fact in knowing Tony for nearly 30 years I can honestly say I never heard anyone say he was OK! If you asked people what they thought of him it would be ‘He’s great, our Toe’ or ‘I hate the bastard’ I think he loved that, the fact that everyone had an opinion about him. He was never ‘Tony who?’ and never should he have been.

Filed under: About Tony Michaelides, Journey Through The Past, Opportunity, Risk, About Tony Michaelides, BBC Top of the pops, Granada TV, Island Records, tony wilson

Sign here and leave the rest to us…..the art of having a hit.

 

Record companies had it easy, for a long time. They had a product and there was a market, quality artists making quality music to a receptive public. Music was a big part of people’s lives and they were happy to indulge. Just when there appeared to be a dip in the market, along came the CD.  Over the years record companies had failed to maintain standards…..too many average acts releasing average records that lead to a disillusioned public, one that wasn’t as stupid as the industry thought.

 

With the CD however, all of a sudden they got lucky…..all this quality back catalogue at their disposal and without the recording costs. They were able to repackage it and sell it back to the people who had bought it previously…. but in a new format. Profit margins were high and it gave them the money to invest in the new artists they were signing…..provided the public were interested in their new signings. The honeymoon over, sales started to decline.

 

The downsizing of the music business has had its benefits though. The mess the record companies got themselves in to partly, though not entirely of their own doing, has lead to a shift of power…back to the artist. Too may record companies were signing too many acts…….throw enough shit against the wall and some of it will stick. They can no longer afford to that….a blessing in disguise and an opportunity for the artists to realize that what they needed a record company for in the past no longer applies, the recording cost advance and distribution. I’ll come back to that on a future blog, and in more detail.

 

Artists are abundant with ideas and quite often they have more imagination than a great deal of the people at record companies. They think creative, not budget. It’s worked out well for the more astute, thinking musician. While the record company can’t afford to take the risk, artists don’t want them to and think they can do a better job anyway. It’s cheaper too and you don’t get landed with ‘the bill.’

 

Gone are the days where you needed a record company to deposit a bag of cash so you could make a record. The plan was simple, we the record company sign you and give you an advance and then………….you will spend your entire life giving it us back. You will pay for everything, every lavish video you make that will help us market and promote it….is a cost to you, every stylist we tell you to use because you’re still too ugly to film, is a cost to you. Every time we go to radio, and ONE music programmer tells us the song is too long, the chorus comes in too late, we will run back to head office and insist on a remix for radio, you will be charged for. How many times have I heard that desperate excuse bleated out at a record company meeting?

 

When you’ve paid, or should I say owe the record company for the remix and still it’s not on the radio then the marketing meeting, the one that happens every Monday morning will announce…………. we’ve done an extended version and it’s in the shops tomorrow so the fans (if you still have any left) will buy able to buy it (for ‘buy’ see ‘ripped off’)

 

The major record company Einstein theory behind this one is…..we STILL can’t get it played BUT if the fans, the poor bastards who liked you before we’d ever heard of you, go and buy it then it will chart ……. and meanwhile we’d done the math and it’s made it on the bill, your bill.

 

What has happened here is…. the contingency plan. We took it to radio because we thought we could make you successful, get you on the radio and make this a hit (remember that crappy little cassette you gave us which had those great songs on?….you know the one we spent 50K on, tarting it up…now you remember!)…….. Well, we couldn’t so now we are forcing it on the unsuspecting public and they’ll get it in to the charts for us  ………..and then, the radio stations who don’t play music unless it’s in the charts may re consider it for their playlists, because they’ll have to….because it’s a hit.

 

That in turn will then make it easier for the independent radio and press people we brought in, the ones we had to because your manager insisted he didn’t think ours could do the job. Did he/she neglect to tell you that you’ll be paying for that too, and of course the bonuses they’ll get when the record’s a hit?…the one the public bought without hearing it on the radio

 

Fantastic, maybe it would have been cheaper to dispense with everything in the first place and get the public to do the job they couldn’t. Passes the time though.

 

Filed under: Business Lessons, Risk, hit records, independent promotion, record companies, tony michaelides

Get up, stand up..Creative Failure

 You would never think two words like creativity and failure would go together at all, but they do. ‘Fail’ always sounds such an extreme word, so final……….when most of the time failure is just the beginning to success. It might not be success with the first thing you ever attempt but it’s the experience you gain from failure that will help you to succeed

 

I have valued most everything I ever went in to as an adventure, an exercise in knowledge and experience. Of course some bring you heartache at the time, but if I didn’t think I had learned from that experience I would never try anything again, would I?  I never questioned my decision in trying something. Once I made the decision to go for it then I just set out to make it a success. Some of the things that might happen along the way may be out of your control but still, that’s a lesson too. Sometimes it can be as simple as ‘wrong time’ That’s Ok. Next time just make sure it’s the right time. Failure comes from risk, just as opportunity and success do. It’s always the right decision…provided you move forward from the experience.

 

Most successful people have failed, and many of them several times. You don’t think successful people fail…..but they do…. the difference is they don’t see it as failure, more something of value. With some there is a stigma attached to failure, they see it as embarrassment. That should never be the case. Where is the shame in taking a risk, in showing that you are prepared to take that chance? I personally think it is the opposite and that people who take risks are admired, certainly in business. The greatest the risk can mean the greater the reward.

 

When I first met Simon Cowell in the early 90’s he was 30, he’d been bankrupt twice and was living with his parents. That stopped you in your tracks didn’t it! You would never equate Simon Cowell with failure but he has seen failure as much as anyone. What makes him special is his ability to get up, dust himself down and make sure whatever went wrong doesn’t happen again. He has had failures but still doesn’t accept the meaning of the word, they’re more setbacks, a bit of a nuisance! He shows great character and resilience and has that determination to make things work. Obviously it’s a lot easier now for him with money in the bank, but he still does it at the risk of failure. He still sees opportunities there and he wants to take them. He hardly needs the money, but he relishes the challenge.

 

Simon was always an entertaining character. When I used to promote his records when he was at BMG he would drive me mad at times. I’d have these conversations with him and try to explain why people didn’t play records by glove puppets like Zig and Zag or ‘The Power Rangers’ but he still would insist they were hits. ‘Yes’ I’d say ‘but it won’t be down to me getting them played!’ You just gave up in the end and agreed to disagree. Simon’s big break came from a couple of actors in the UK and a cover version of the Righteous Brothers’ ‘Unchained melody’ It became the biggest selling record of the year but to most people they were just a couple of good looking guys with a popular TV show, certainly not singers. Simon Cowell spent months and months persuading them to make a record, offering them ludicrous sums of money until eventually they relented, like we all did but without the cash!

Filed under: Business Lessons, Managing Creativity, Opportunity, Risk, Add new tag, BMG, creative failure, creativity, failure, Risk, smon cowell, tony michaelides