FRIDAY FEBRUARY 29, 2008
From: Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
For crying out Queen!!!!! Simon, where do these vile creatures of the past come from? It reeks of pure boredom and envy (penis). And to direct you to have everything delivered to your hotel room! I guess he must be disabled. Take a deep breath and sing a good song, for you can run, walk and dance and still have time to send this Skeleton back to his crypt!
These people come from long ago - queens I met in my teens - when they were the bright young twenty-somethings of post-war gay London. They're no better or worse than gays of any other generation, but somewhat disabled (as you put it) by the utterly NON-OUT era into which they were born. Like poor old Dirk Bogarde insisting to his last breath that he wasn't gay, and that Forwood, the man he loved and lived with (and wrote about at great length in his autobiographies), was some sort of Victorian chaperone. Most of these people aren't vile at all (though Theo Sharpton could be the exception). It's just the way they like to talk. Out of date! Living in a time-warp of inter-personal haute bitchesse.
From: Theo Sharpton, Weymouth, Dorset, UK
Simon, my dear, I'm fascinated to know to what you were referring in your post the other day when you said that, in Taipei, you and Casey (and who the hell is HE, by the way?) went out 'searching for debauchery'. Apart from anything else, surely a man of your means is capable of having debauchery delivered straight to his hotel room. And tell me, what was it you were after? Drugs? Young men's bottoms? Just wondering, that's all.
So Theo, you're still alive are you? What a pity - I was hoping you'd have expired by now. You seem as vile as ever.
Casey was (still is, I hope) a charming Singaporean, one of several people with whom I was travelling round Asia looking for musical talent. He is the owner of a substantial company in Bangkok that does interior designs for corporate conventions. I'm not sure why he was travelling with us, but whatever the reason he made our trip more pleasureable than it would have been without him (something I doubt anyone's ever said of you).
Now - about that debauchery.
Drugs were most definitely not on our list. And although youg men's bottoms might have provided a soupçon of delight had they passed in the night, they too were not our prinicpal focus. It was more a matter of seeing whether Taipei had anything better to offer than sterile shopping malls. In the event, we ended up in a rather dreary pub with live music. Then on to the strange meal I described. Sorry to disappoint you. Hope you're not too well.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 27, 2008
From: The Right Honorable Ronald Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi neph Simon! Jet lagged? I think you want to listen to this!!!!
Hi Uncle Ron! Hotel lagged is more like it. Anyway, it's good to be back next to my own swimming pool.
Re this!!!! - I don't know whether to be embarassed or flattered.
To find my book being reviewed on Radio 4s most serious book review programme along with Iris Murdoch's 'The Bell'... well, amazing!!
Tom Robinson, who chose it, is an old friend. Even so, it must have taken some nerve on his part to select it, knowing as he did that the specfied books were going to get such an intense going over - almost fifteen minutes each. Normally they're chosen from works that are at least a touch stuffy, if not fully-fledged literary art. For my book to have been through that programme and survived (well, I presume it did since no-one said anything too awful about it) is quite something.
So thanks for the link.
Would lunch Monday at the Oriental interest you?
(I have to collect my Indian visa.)
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 26, 2008
From: Chris Bickley, Wintersun Project, London, UK
sorry about flooding you with my reply, simon.
i got typing and had trouble stopping.
I wish I could suffer the same problem each time I sit down to work on my new book.
I have to admit your turgid description of all that's gone wrong for you in the music business makes dreary reading. But don't you realise - everyone who's ever worked as an artist, manager, songwriter or producer can give you a smiliar list of examples? It's the nature of the music business.
I reckon, for every hundred times we feel we should've had a hit but didn't, we earn ourselves one chance of success. Your problem is, you're only on your tenth failure. You need another ninety or so before being justified in feeling things should get better.
Maybe you haven't the stomach for it. In which case wife and kids and day-job is probably the best way to go.
MONDAY FEBRUARY 25, 2008
From: John Lowndes, London, UK
hi si..! still looking forward to you updating your 'eating out' section with last year's best meals.. meanwhile... from your postings during the last two weeks i gather you've been flitting round asia... i bet you ate well... what were the best meals..?
Shameful to admit; it was so damned cold we hardly went out. Instead we got people to come to us for meetings then ate in dreary hotel restaurants. And while the hotels may have been 5-star, the meals mostly weren't. As a result Peking duck in Peking was far less delicious than it had been in Bangkok the day before I set off. Though in Seoul there was a stunning snail stew amongst items on the lunch menu. Tokyo provided the taste treat of the trip - an oversized prawn head crushed on a tepanayaki grill.
In Taipei the weather was warmer so Casey and I went searching for debauchery. We found none but ended up ravenously hungry round 1am in a simple neighbourhood canteen, bleak and neon-lit, where we received an object lesson in minimalist cooking. On the counter was a good-sized raw fish, snow-white and without scales. A diagonal slice was dropped into a soup bowl, grated with ginger and pumpkin and seasoning, then doused in boiling water. The resulting soup was so perfect it put everything else we'd eaten on the trip to shame - ascetic and voluptuous in one and the same mouthful.
In complete contrast, today I had lunch with Phil Whelan at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Hong Kong and was unable to resist the lamb vindaloo. Probably a bad move because last time I had it the rim of my bum was on fire for a week. But it seemed like a good idea at the time.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 24, 2008
From: Chris Bickley, Wintersun Project, Manchester/Nottingham/London, UK
Hi Simon,
hope your fareing well. I read your article about major-label self destruction, and almost injured myself when I read this paragraph: "I left the building thinking, 'What a wanker!' And it’s been difficult to think of A&R people in any other way since." My ribs are still aching after reading that. It is without doubt the most funny and most truth I've ever read in one paragraph about the music business.
Hi Chris! Good to know I made you laugh. Strangely, although I often write things to be funny, that time I didn't. It was just the plain sad truth. And in the forty years since then I've encountered it time and time again (as you obviously have too).
Ed Bicknell told me one about Dire Straits. They finished recording a new single and were called in to the office by their A&R man at Polygram who said the single didn't have the same feel as the original demo - the tempo was different. He sat them down to compare the two and got out his stopwatch to prove his point. Well of course the tempos were different! The demo he was playing was a completely different song.
In the early 90s the head of A&R at BMG told me a slow rock track I'd recorded would never be a hit because "rock acts never get hits with ballads". On the actual day he told me Brian Adams was at Number One for the SIXTEENTH consecutive week with a rock ballad, "Everything I do".
Then there was Gary Stoner, an artist I managed for a while in the 80s. The head of A&R at MCA called to say he loved the cassette of songs Gary had sent him; he was offering him a recording deal and wanted to sit down at once to discuss terms. Halfway through the meeting the A&R man put on the cassette to refer to a couple of Gary's songs. He was listening to the wrong side of the cassette - it was Elton John's current album. Personally, I'd have taken the deal and run. But Garry's pride was hurt, so he got up and left.
And there's thousands more. Perhaps someone should compile a book of 'A&R Howlers'. (Not me, thanks!)
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 23, 2008
From: Steve Albertsen, London, UK
Simon, I see you're back on your Asian talent search. You reckoned you'd find something of real quality. I said you'd only find sacharine pop. Now be honest - who's right?
Me, of course. How could you think otherwise. It's true the music industries in most Asian countries focus mainly on pop - K-Pop in Korea, J-Pop in Japan, etc. But everywhere we've been we've also found really good underground and indie groups playing in the true tradition of rebellious rock. As you'd expect, some of it's good and some is total crap - in China for instance, we trolled through 900 groups to choose just 12, but those 12 were as good as anything you'd find if you did a similar search in the UK or US. Japan too turned up plenty of unconventional stuff, but then it's always been a breeding ground for the esoteric. Best of all was a guy we found In Taiwan - Mr. Laka Uwmao. He goes into the countryside and records trees growing, frogs croaking and old ladies feeding their chickens; then he mixes it with rock and trance and sings over the top of it, turning it into something rather ear-catching. So in the main you're wrong - we're finding plenty of stuff which goes beyond the limitations of pop. Whether it's marketable or not we'll have to wait and see.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2008
From: John Dang, Manchester, UK
Simon, that was such an amusing email. It made me chuckle to myself. For
some reason I had images of you dressed up like an eskimo hunched over
your laptop, cursing the discovery of email... and then suddenly the skies
opened, the sunshine shone forth and you burst into song. I really must stop watching musicals!
Well I know how it is with those backlogs. No problem.
Bloody hell - I only told you how nice it was to arrive in sunny Taiwan after being frozen half to death in Beijing and Tokyo (which for some reason made me unable to face the great stack of emails in my inbox). In Tokyo it was almost as cold inside the hotel as out. And it was freezing my bollocks off! Which for an old fart like me is no joke. I mean, these days they perform badly enough even when they're piping hot.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 21, 2008
From: Dick Stern, Los Angeles, USA
Hey Simon... I read your piece about record companies progressively screwing up over the last thirty years and thought... you can't have worked as a manager all that time without getting to like a few of the record company guys. So give us the lowdown - who were the good guys in the record companies?
Loads of them. For a manager, record company executives were the enemy (and still are), but for a long time our attitude was - it just happens to be the job they do. Now it's changed. The corporate attitude tends to be - what the hell, if you're a top artist and we screw you, you're still a multi-millionaire, so what's it matter! As a manager representing an artist, you can't accept that. More important is the way the major record companies can so totally screw up a new artist's chances. But don't think the people who work for them aren't nice. They always were - that's how the companies managed to pull in all those great artists in the first place. Most of the big record-company names from the past were thoroughly agreeable people - some, less so, but fun anyway - a few, complete shits, but still hugely entertaining. All the people I mentioned in my piece fall into one of those categories or another. Work out which for yourself.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 20, 2008
From: Paul Coleman, London, UK
Hi Simon, I am a mature PhD Doctoral Researcher at the University of Westminster. I am starting out on a Research Project... getting together some Focus Groups from various people involved in the Music Industry. I would like to invite you to participate in one or more of my Focus Groups to let me know your feelings on the subject... 'The Impact of Music Reality Television on the Music Business Ecosystem'.
Paul, this is going to surprise you I’m sure, but I’m unable to accept your kind offer as I am busy with my own Phd thesis on ‘The Impact of Grants for Doctoral Research on the Pretentious Pomposity of Student Tossers.'
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 19, 2008
From: Jim Charles, Orlando, Florida, USA
Hi Simon! You mentioned a few weeks ago that you were working with people who were searching for musical talent all over Asia. But if the music business is in the bad shape you say it is (see your article: 'How the Record Companies Buggered Themselves!), what's the point of looking for new talent?
You stupid sodbox, you totally misunderstood what I said - I never said the music industry was in bad shape, I said it's never been better. It's just record companies that are on the way out, and deservedly so. The music industry as a whole is thriving. Attendances for live music are at an all-time high, through the internet new artists are finding fans more quickly, diverse and obscure musical forms are reaching an audience that was previously difficult to contact, and advances in computerisation are making recorded music sound better than ever before. The big change is... in future music won't be brought to us by records. Consequently, the people who've always depended on the sale of records for their salaries (their perks, their holidays, their status, their arrogance and their cocaine - i.e. record company executives) will have to start looking elsewhere for their daily subsistence. But artists, managers, booking agents, promoters and merchandisers will continue as before.
The next for oblivion will be publishers. The idea that they should take thirty or forty per cent of a songwriter's income for administering the collection of royalties is ludicrous. Royalties are collected throughout the world by collection societies. Any work the publisher does in receiving royalty statements from the collection societies and passing them on to writers is done in milliseconds by computers. So listen up singers, songwriters and groups! After you've said piss off to the record companues, say it to the publishers too!
MONDAY FEBRUARY 18, 2008
From: Adrian Scholes, Birmingham, UK
Browsing through your old emails I discovered one in which you expressed a loathing for Shakepeare. In another you admitted to having played a small part in one of his plays when you where at school. You seemed uncertain whether it was a real part or something your English master had invented to give you a particpation in the event. From your recollections I deduced that you played Tom Snout, a tinker, in Midsummer's Night Dream. In the play he acts a part in a 'play within a play', that of Wall (not Chink, as you said) but otherwise exactly as you described - by holding up two fingers in a V through which the other actors peer and converse. What you apparently failed to remember is that you had speaking lines too. Prior to the 'play within a play', Tom Snout, the character you must have played, appears in three separate scenes and has several speaking lines, albeit short ones. Finally, in the 'play within a play', he speaks a good few lines at the beginining, starting with, "In this same interlude it doth befall, that I, one Snout by name, present a wall". Then some twenty minutes later during which he renders his services as a wall, he speaks one final line before leaving the stage.
So...! Despite your protestations, it seems you once played a rather important part in one of Shakespeare's better known plays. Just thought I'd let you know.
Fuck me! I had no idea. The things we do when we're young, eh!
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 17, 2008
From: Jim Reisz, West Hollywood, Ca, USA
hi simon... do you keep a diary.?? i mean, i was wondering... d'you write your books from memory or what.?? and if you do keep a diary how about publishing that as a book... just a thought!!!
On and off, I've tried keeping a diary but I'm too ill-disciplined to keep it going. I write my books on the basis that... if I can't remember it, it probably wasn't worth remembering. But I have to be honest - this's an excuse rather than a technique. Occasionally I've found old diaries or single sheets of paper on which I've scribbled things at the time. Usually they're fascinating, mainly because I can't remember a thing about the occasion. For instance last week I was clearing out a drawer and found several paragraphs about a gig in Miami when I was managing Asia. By coincidence it was something I'd written about on the website a few weeks ago (from memory). And I have to admit, for good reading the diary is better....
Friday - arrive in Miami for 'Hurricane Relief' - get to the hotel and a coke peddler (someone Geoff met in San Francisco) has turned up in a white Lincoln stretch wanting to be everyone's best friend. He gives Steve (Howe) some news he hasn't yet heard - there's so many acts on stage tomorrow that Asia has to play an accoustic set. "For Christ's sake!" Steve yells at me and Harry (not the coke dealer). "Why didn't you tell me before we left London? If I'd known, I'd have never come." Well of course he wouldn't. Which is why we hadn't told him. Harry is handed a note from someone saying the coke dealer's been phoning record stations all over Florida purporting to be the group's manager, offering them interviews and the like. Now it's us yelling. Steve joins in on the coke dealer's side. Geoff, adds a bit here and there on both sides of the fence, Vinny's watching the brou-ha-ha like it's a hockey game. Finally Harry and I triumph and the miserable bugger runs out of the hotel and swishes off down the road in his nasty white limo. But a couple of hours later he turns up again. There's a party thrown by the record-company and he's there offering everyone their own personal choice of oblivion. The argument about the accoustic set erupts all over again. Then I see him herding the band into his limo and they zoom off into the night.
Saturday. This morning I needed an hour's run in the hotel gym to get rid of my hangover, then forty minutes under a scalding shower to nurse my brain back to health. Despite all the quarelling last night I'm optimistic about the gig - I have the feeling that once everyone has slept of the effects of whatever substances they did last night and has woken up and breakfasted and re-drugged themselves to just the right degree, things will probably turn out OK. And I'm right. At three-thirty in the afternoon Harry and I arrive at the stadium to find the band in the dressing-room with Steve in a thoroughly good mood, looking forward to playing a new accoustic guitar he's picked up from somewhere overnight. The others are happy too. And there's no mention of the coke dealer who's nowhere to be seen. The band seem to have ditched him and re-joined the side of reason.
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 16, 2008
From: Cissie Sheraton, Portland, Oregon, USA
Dear Simon - one last try - and I know how much you hate me doing this, but couldn't you please attempt to open your mind wide to the possibility that through music you might find what you have been unable to find through intellect. Go to songdiscovery.com today. Through music discover God.
Cissie, sweetheart, you shouldn't think I have a closed mind about such things - I love new discoveries. How exciting it would be to learn that a manned space probe sent out to investigate Mars turned left round the back of it only to discover God himself sitting on a cloud combing his hair, or eating an ice cream, or having a wank. Once I knew for sure he was holed up round the back of Mars I’d be happy to be a believer – not in his omnipotence, or goodness, or intelligence, but at least in his existence – like the white-lipped snake they found in Vietnam last year or the bright red squid in the Pacific the year before. Even so, excuse me if I give your wesbite a miss.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 15, 2008
From: Alex Ogg, Cherry Red Records, London, UK
Hi Simon,
sorry for troubling you, but I just wondered if you'd be interested in
commenting on the deal you signed in the early 80s with Cherry Red to
licence the Marc Bolan albums (and singles released from it). I'm writing
the sleevenotes for a new Cherry Red box set, trying to get some thoughts on
each of the releases.
The
Bolan tracks were the ones I recorded the very first evening I met him.
He turned up out of the blue at my apartment and said he was a singer looking for a manager. He had a guitar slung over his shoulder so I told him to sing me a quick song, instead he climbed into my biggest armchair (he was very tiny) and played about twenty of them, and they were mesmerising. So at 10pm I phoned a studio, took him there in a taxi and he recorded the same twenty songs - just him and the accoustic guitar. By half-past midnight we were having dinner at the Lotus House and I was his new manager. Ten years later, when he died, I
dug out those original tracks and created backing tracks in the style I thought he might have
chosen at the time. It was very difficult because, being just him
and an accoustic guitar, they were wildly out of tempo. I edited the
tapes into time as best I could then got Clem Cattini (for me, always Britain's best session drummer) to come in and
play to them. He was brilliant at uping and downing the tempo with Marc's
original guitar and vocal. Then I dubbed on a bass guitar followed by other
instruments, one by one, until each of the tracks sounded like Marc had a live band backing him. The end result was a pretty good album. Which is probably why you're still managing to sell it twenty-five years later.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 14, 2008
From: Gregory Gray, California, USA
Hi Simon... i haven't been sending any jazz lately coz i is in the
dusty-bollocked california desert, charming all the
over-sixty faggy hairy bearded harleydavidson bikers... they LOVE me...they
find my irishness seriously otherworldly, so
i'm milking it for all i'm worth.... i had one beat the living crap out of
me the uvver night (safely, i might add)... he was
your typical classic aggressive incurable romantic...
i love it out here... it's like the flintstones....
america is so neanderthal.....
Hi Gregory - always a treat to receive correspondence about you sex life - so utterly different from anything I can imagine for myself. I'm delighted you found a hairy biker to bash you with happiness in the Californian desert. I love your otherwordly Irishness too, though it's not your scrawny body that attracts but the vivid insights and prose of your emails (and the great jazz tracks you send me). You're a constant reminder that sexual preference should be nobody's business but your own.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 13, 2008
From: Mark Johnston, Dayton, Ohio, USA.
Hi Simon,
Chris Townson’s wife, Marylyn, dropped me a note tonight and informed me that Chris had lost his long battle against cancer today, a battle he'd been fighitng courageously for the past six months or more. I figured you would want to know.
Chris could be so gentle and easygoing, it fooled people. They often didn’t realize how steely he was underneath, nor how totally together.
I last met up with him in the late 70s, but when I read things on his memorial page by people who’d only met him later in life, it was very much the same Chris I knew from the 60s and 70s. There were so many extraordinary things to remember. Like when he cut his wrist on a cymbal in the middle of a set so the blood spurted out over the snare drum. It was at some God-awful John's Children gig in Peterborough - or was it Harlow? Or Stevenage? Instead of letting me rush him off to hospital he insisted on playing to the end of the set, the snare getting more and more covered with blood. Chris was thoroughly enjoying himself – laughing as he played, hitting the drum harder than ever, making the blood splash over Andy as he pranced around in front of him.
Then there was the time he stood in for Keith Moon on a Who tour after Keith broke a leg. No-one had ever done that before and the Who thought nobody could. But Chris amazed them with his ability to fit in. Without rehearsal, he joined them for the last five days of their UK tour and most of the audience didn't realise it wasn't Keith.
He had a brilliant sense of humour too. He could draw devastatingly funny cartoons and when John’s Children broke up, we went off to Egypt together to sketch out a script for an animated movie we’d dreamt up - about a truculent camel called Cyril. Our research took us to the Pyramids, the Valley of the Kings and the creepy back alleys of Luxor. But in the end the script was never finished - every time Chris drew a new sketch we laughed so much we forgot where the plot was meant to go next. But what a great holiday!
And what a great friend!
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 12, 2008
From: Alexis Parr, London, UK
Dear Simon,
I'm on my knees after another mad week, of which the highlight was hooking up with you. This is to thank you for the divine dinner and acidic company! You were a vision in silver grey. Well it's London Fashion Week and I'm off to the Baglione for a fab show. Mwah Mwah darling...
Grey, eh - grey hair, grey face, grey mood, I suppose - I do remember being a bit snarly that evening; just got back from Leeds, hadn't I? But you were as sparkling as ever. And the food too! That place remains my favourite fish restaurant in the world - halibut in champagne sauce, I can still taste it now. Though the real higlight of the evening was your mad U-turn across Holland Park Road to deliver me back to my hotel. Currently I'm freezing in Beijing. It's the middle of Chinese New Year. The deserted hotel, empty streets and endless distant firecrackers make it feel like the fall of Saigon. Food's good though!!
MONDAY FEBRUARY 11, 2008
From: Nick McGeachin, San Francisco, Cal, USA
Hi Simon. Tiesto will be appearing in Bangkok on April 18th. Hopefully you'll be in
town, and I can arrange a convivial meeting to partake of a Heineken or four! PS: Saw a very good American 'Bio TV' interview with George Michael a few
nights ago. Best guess is that it was recorded 3/4 months back. He talked about Wham!'s visit to China, your name was dropped a few times, and there
was a b/w piccie of you - looking VERY young - dropped in for good measure.
Hi Nick - re Tiesto, if I'm in Bangkok I'll attend, but I'm not sure. First I have a touch of travel - London, New York, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, Taipei, Hong Kong - two days each with a day for flying between. After that I get a week at home then spend a month doing the same thing round India, which brings me to April. Since I live two hours from Bangkok I might feel too depleted to drive up there. On the other hand I might find myself bursting with energy, in which case Tiesto will be blessed with my presence.
The programme on George was one I was meant to do, but these days, unless they can wait for me to turn up in London to speak my piece, I get left out of such things. Good to know I was well mentioned and a photo was used that showed off my lustrous charm.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 10, 2008
From: Phil Antioch, New York NY, USA
hey simon... you said next time in town we'd hook up but it seems you swept in and swept out with never a word... so i guess it'll be the next nexttime... what were you up to???
Sorry Phil, it really was a quick one. A radio show for Little Steven's rock music channel on Sirius Radio. Arrived, had dinner with Vicki and Nona, did the show on Friday, fell fast asleep till lunchtime Saturday then had lunch with Vicki again together with Nancy Jones (previously Lewis, remember? - she worked with Strat in London in the 60s, then managed the Pythons in the USA).
Little Steven's set up is great. Do you know him? Guitarist with Bruce Springsteen's E-street band and a principal character in The Sopranos. He has a great music channel which plays the sexiest sixtiest type rock - most of it contemporary but all sounding classic and rather British. He has all these people doing shows for him from wherever they live - Andrew Loog Oldham from Bogota, Kim Fowley from the Arizona desert (or is it Nevada?). We're discussing whether I might do a weekly show from wherever I am each week.
Funny thing - I'd just arrived at his office when a giant teenager came up to me and said he'd heard I was having lunch with his mother the following day. It was Nancy's son, Tim. Last time I'd seen him he was about one and Nancy and I had to cancel dinner 'cos he wouldn't stop crying (frightened by the baby-sitter, I think). Now he's working for Steven. (That's me and his mum at lunch at the top of the page.).
I'm now on the way to Beijing (the long way round - just reached London, next stop Bangkok, then to Beijing - very tiring, but it has its upside - on the flight from New York nobody else wanted caviar so the steward opened a 250 gram jar and handed me the lot with a desert spoon).
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 9, 2008
From: Anthony Cooper, Whitstable, Kent, UK
Dear Simon, long time no speak! Just a quickie.....? We are trying to kidnap the the No. 1 spot in the UK Charts through a download strategy over the week of Feb 25th - March 2nd in the name of environmental change. We wondered if you could help us through your media connections? You can see/hear the song on our website - www.dontdothedodo.com.
Hi Anthony. Lovely to hear from you, but you obviously haven't been reading what I've been saying about global warming the last couple of days. Still... I'm always happy to help.
I listened to the song but don't know what to think. It certainly has a catchy chorus but the verses seem a bit embarassing. Maybe it will sweep to the top of the charts, or maybe zilch! (I can't really tell.)
I'm currently on a lightning trip to New York and about to get on a plane to Beijing. All I can suggest is what I'm now doing - putting your email on the website so the link can be seen by everyone who comes here (which includes a lot of media people). It's just up to how much they like of the song.
(By the way - I can't believe you're still dressing up in that ridiculous dodo suit.)
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2008
From: Selina Anderson, London, UK
Simon - such facist tones you use about cutting back the world's population - surely it would be better to join with people already doing something about the problems of global warming - we know you are not really serious - so why not try to do something that will help.
How serious is serious? I don't care much, that's true. But that's because I won't be around anyway. And of course, I hardly think what I suggested will happen. But it's blindingly obvious the problem is too many people. The law decides how many people can get in a taxi. The same applies to how many people can enter a bus, a nightclub, a football stadium or Australia. Sooner or later scientists have to get together and work out the capacity of the world's resources and the optimum number of people to inhabit it - one billion, two billion, or three. Then a way has to be found to steady the population at that figure, which will probably involve a goodbye party for the Pope.
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 7, 2008
From: Cherie Stitz, New York, NY, USA
Hello Simon. I am trying to get a good list of music business personalities together for The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change to be held March 2nd to 4th at the Marriott Times Square Hotel
New York. I'm sure this is a subject that concerns you greatly and I pray you will be persuaded to show solidarity with all of us who wish to save our planet. (Please check out our wonderful website: www.christianmusicplanet.com).
Wow, Cherie, that's a hell of a moniker you've given yourself. It must be murder giving your name over the telephone. But I'm not here to sympathise. You're just too damned annoying.
Now then... re global warming... I've said all this before but here I go again....
I've no doubt there's global warming and it would be best dealt with. But the world doesn't need saving and will eventually survive perfectly well without us whether it be it in 300 years time or 3 million. For people fixated on extending the term of our tenancy the one single answer is to reduce the population. Less people means less cars, less exhaust fumes, less animals for eating, less cow farts, less sheep farts, less us farts. What's been proposed so far will reduce carbon emissions by 20% in 50 years. To reduce them 50% in 20 years the world should follow China's example and make it illegal for any two people to have more than one child. To compliment this, George Bush could get himself the legacy he so much wants by chemically condoming the worlds most overpopulated places, i.e. - germ-bombing them with a viral weapon that induces impotence. Et voilà - excessive carbon emissions gone. As for me; I've done my bit. Homosexuals everywhere should be rewarded with tax breaks, double pensions and early retirement for their help in reducing carbon emissions by not adding to the world's population.
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 6, 2008
From: Andrew Aris, Chicago, Ill, USA
hi simon... in your piece about record companies you suggest they're almost finished... but i'm doing media & music business studies in chicago where many of the students are still planning to find jobs with record companies.. do you find that strange...?
Perhaps they have a hidden urge to be undertakers. Yesterday I spoke at the Academy of Contemporary Music in Guildford. A couple of years ago, when I was last there, a third of the students doing music business studies said they wanted to work in record companies. When I asked them yesterday not a single one put their hand up. Several students had just come back from Midem where they'd heard music business lawyers talk about the new deals record companies are offering their artists - 360 degree deals - music business jargon for taking a slice of artists' earnings from every source. The trouble the companies are going to confront is... Having been found out for cheating on record royalties all these years, who's going to want to give them a chance to cheat on everything else too?
TUESDAY FEBRUARY 5, 2008
Olaf Juerss, Bremen, Germany
dear simon,
after i read your recent article about the music biz & the way record companies exploit their artists, i simply couldn't help but openly applaud u for what u've written there!
i posted a bulletin via myspace to which i've got a comment by nobody else than rusty egan today! anyway... i really like the way u write & that's why i also like to ask u very directly if u would like to do your very own lil' radio show talking freely about music (or whatever else) & play the music that u really like!?
we are NOT only an internet radio station but also transmit all our shows via antenna & cable frequencies! so if u are interested in doing your very own 1 hour show more or less regularily please don't hesitate to get in touch with me.
Hi Olaf, that's a nice offer, but the problem is, I prefer other people choosing the records; I very quickly get bored with my own choices. As for being able to say whatever I want... well, just from replying to emails on this website I've become bored to death of hearing what I've got to say. Though having said that, on Thursday I'm flying to New York to record a radio show for Sirius which might make me like the idea more than I thought. So can I keep you hanging on a bit?
MONDAY FEBRUARY 4, 2008
From: Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
Dearest Simon: Your remark about women secretly voting for Hillary caused me to spew my coffee this morning. I will cast my vote for Obama for change. Hillary is the incarnation of The Bride of Chucky! She and Slick Willy filled the White house with southern trailer trash. If she were to get elected, I will move to Mexico and live under the rule of dictatorship!
Like taking a cold shower - your first woman head of state will come as a shock - but afterwards you'll feel the better for it. Brits can tell you. Thatcher didn't always feel good in situ, but once she'd gone it felt good to have done the right thing and let her have a go. We could then get back to the beautiful incompetence of (straight) men running the country again.
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 3, 2008
From: Andrew Selkirk-Jones, Dundee, Scotland
Dear Mr Napier-Bell - I do not believe a word of what you are saying about William Shakespeare. I truly believe you are being dishonest when you claim to dislike him so much.
It's not the man I dislike, nor even his works, just the reverence. It's a bit like Jesus. He sandalled around mouthing the sort of platitudes the average child hits on as they approach their teens - 'money isn't everything' 'help the needy' 'all you need is love' - then suddenly he's dead and there's this huge religion. Same with Shakepeare. He concocted some good plots, coupled them with a keen observation of life, then wrote them down in the dramatic style of the day which unfortunately was a repetitive lilt reminiscent of the didldedum of a long train journey. Next thing you know we have Shakepearanity. I'm quite prepared to admit I've occasionally been badgered into attending one of his plays and found it little worse than watching horse jumping or stock car racing or Celine Dion. The trick is to push the lilting pentameters to the back of your mind and fill the foreground with the menu at the Ivy or Claridges or wherever else you're planning to eat afterwards.
SATURDAY FEBRUARY 2, 2008
From: Trish Samuels, Bristol, UK
Well Simon, now you've really gone and done it. Poo-pooing religion is pretty acceptable these days, as is slagging off record companies, but in my book maligning Shakepeare is (and should be) a king-size taboo. It makes you look like an intelectual lout. In fact it does more than make you look like one; it let's us know you are one.
I feel redeemed by having acted in a Shakepeare play at school. The performance took place in the school's Greek theatre, a rather fine open-air edifice, very nice on a warm summer's evening, which this was. I played the part of chink (a Midsummer Night's Dream, I think). It consisted of me being the chink in the wall through which people looked. The chink was created by me standing with my right arm outstretched, the index and third fingers seperated into a 'V' through which other characters came and peered. (I've no idea if this is a regular part in the play, or a clever invention by the English master who was overseeing the production and wanted me included.) I wasn't very good at it because my arm got tired and kept sloping downwards causing the actors to have to stoop down to look throught the chink. I was much better in Androcles and the Lion. Not Shakepeare, but Shaw, so I was given a speaking part, well a groaning part actually - I was the unhappy lion with a thorn in his foot. Shaw, by the way, wrote really good plays - every word understandable and none of it spoken in those dreadful mind-numbing pentameters that Shakepeare was so made about.
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2008
From: Trevor Atkins, Birmingham, UK
Simon, I can't believe you don't like Shakespeare. You're an intelligent, literate, liberal-minded person. How could you not like him? You should go back and try again.
Can't stand him. Never could! And I've no more sympathy with being told to think again about Shakespeare than with being told to think again about God. It's none of your business. Shut up! Piss off! I have a pathological hatred of Shakepeare and I'm happy with it. Anyway, I can never understand a single bloody word. I prefer people who write in English.
THURSDAY JANUARY 31, 2008
From: Rory Shands, Pittsburgh, Penn, USA
hey simon... i wondered... living there in thailand do you have any interest in american politics..? your blogs often show a soft spot for black people and a hard one for women... your take on the barack/hillary clash might be interesting...
Once you stop living in Britain, American politics are the only ones that matter. The problem with Barack Obama is that dreadful sing-song voice he uses for his speeches. It's evangelism, and I hate it. The musicality of the speaking overwhelms the words. It's like Shakepeare, and I hate that too. The single great thing about Tony Blair was the way he always talked as if he was talking, not as if he was doing the soliloquy from Romeo an Juliet.
As for Hillary, and those stupid political commentators who accuse her of having a love of 'naked power'. Who cares? Why would anyone want a position of that type anyway except that they had a love of power and position. They accuse her of doing anything she can to get elected. But surely that's what you're meant to do! The point is, just for a woman to get to that position is sufficient in itself to effect a whole host of good social changes. And however much Republicans hate her, their wives, along with almost every other woman in America, will vote for her once they're alone in the polling booth. (Though they won't tell the opinion poles, or the exit poles, or their husbands.) For sure - if an openly gay candidate stood for election as Prime Minister in the UK, I'd vote for him whatever his politics.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 30, 2008
From: Andrew James, London, UK
Simon,
really enjoyed your recent article on record company woes (just as I enjoy all of your musings). However, I'm curious. When you were, briefly, a record company boss (with David Hemmings), were your contracts any fairer, or your practices less sharp, than those you have come across in your dealings with the majors over the years?
I doubt the contracts were any fairer. SNB Records was set up as a CBS label, which meant the records were licensed to CBS and were effectively released as CBS Records. If CBS were paying us around 19% of the retail selling price - (I can't remember now) - we would have been passing about 14% of that onto the artist and producer leaving us a balance of 5% on which to run the company. We would have received royalty statements from CBS based on 19% and worked out from them how much the artists' royalties should be. So whatever underpayment trickery was played on us would get passed on to the artist. It was the standard way things were run in those days - still is, in fact - and most people working in record companies turn a blind eye to it. I only ever got one record company lawyer to own up to how dishonest the contracts were (I mean, while he was still working for a record company). It was Richard Rowe, the son of Dick Rowe, the A&R man at Decca who famously turned down the Beatles. Richard was head of business affairs at CBS in the early eighties when Wham! were suffering all the usual sharp practices. I pointed some of them out to him and he admitted that sometimes his job made him ashamed of himself.
These are just three of hundreds of examples of the sort of clause I'm talking about.
1. At the record company's discretion, royalties for the sale of records in any one country may be calculated on the selling price of the same record in any other country. (In other words, your 10% royalty for 100,000 records sold in Germany at the equivalent of £14 each is going to be calculated as if they'd been sold in Thailand at £2 each.
2. At the record company's discretion, royalties becoming due in any six-monthly period can be carried forward to the next period. (In other words, 'You ain't never gonna get paid!
3.
In the event that an album is subject to a TV advertising campaign, royalties can be reduced by 50 per cent. (This half-payment of royalties could be triggered by half-a-dozen 15 second ads round midnight on Anglia TV for a hundred quid or so each. On a million selling album that could save the record company £750,000.)
TUESDAY JANUARY 29, 2008
From: Guy Smith, UK
Mr Napier-Bell,
I have just read your latest mail and wanted to congratulate you. I'd wrongly assumed that some hired person had designed the website for you.. so I am impressed you did it yourself.
At one point you describe yourself as a pensioner. It made me wonder if you do indeed collect your UK pension.. if only to blow a year's income on one extravagant night out at a restaurant!!
May I ask if you do.
The paltry sum of £124 is paid into my bank account each month in the UK. As you suggest, I see it as a good dinner rather than an insult. But for many people in the music industry, me included, the real pension is royalties. That includes songs I composed, records I produced, films I scored, etc. But while song royalties are paid until 70 years after the writer's death, producer's royalties are another matter. In the 60s I produced records of various artists for most of the major record companies. Recently, noticing one of them being re-released for download, I searched for my old production contract and amazingly found it. Ah, the sad naieveté of the 60s. Hidden away on page 54 in very small print was Clause 72 {viii} b[ii]. It was something I'd never noticed before and which had never been pointed out by my lawyer. "The company has the right to cease payment of producer's royalties seven (7) years from the date hereof". Gosh - don't we all just love record companies!
MONDAY JANUARY 28, 2008
From: Deirdre Saltis, Hong Kong.
Hi Simon. I've been a keen reader of your website for a long time now. I'm often surprised that you keep it going because I don't see what benefits it brings you. Can you explain, please, how and why did you start it - and what does it aim at acheiving for you?
It was about four years ago and the idea was to enlarge the market for my books. A website seemed the right thing to do so I bought the software, read the instructions, locked myself in a room for two weeks and built the thing from scratch. The first thing I put together was the CV section – my life in two lines per year with a photograph from each. I used baby pictures from family albums, teenage ones from school photos, publicity shots from the 60s, 70s and 80s, and holiday snaps for the 90s. But when I got to the present day the photographs started showing me something I’d never really noticed before. The person I’d known and loved since I was a teenager had disappeared - in his place was a fat, ageing, balding, slob.
For two months I put the website on hold. I went on an emergency diet, lost thirty pounds, pounded on the running machine, lifted weights, even got a hint of abs back. But when I went out everyone said I looked dreadful. “Have you been ill?” “Looks like you came out of Belsen.” “You need a holiday….” “…a good meal...” “…some fattening up.”
It was true. When I looked in the mirror, instead of the fat old geezer I’d taken such a dislike to there was now a strain-faced, heavy-lined, sunken-eyed pensioner. So I went back to the drawing board, booked up a few weeks good eating and looked again at the photos I’d disliked so much. They’d been taken during the previous few months - in London on business, in America on holiday, in Thailand on the beach. I tried to think of the person I was looking at as someone else, not myself, someone I’d never met before. And soon I began to think, “Actually, he looks rather pleasant – fat and jolly – knowledgeable and amusing - worth knowing.” So that was that. The website would no longer be devoted to the smooth-talking, oversexed, good-looking clever-dick I’d once been. It would be about this charming old fat bloke.
In order to get the focus of the website right, I decided to ask him the sort of question a journalist might ask, "Describe yourself in no more than a dozen words".
The answer he came up with has guided me since on how to balance subjects on the website.... “Love food, hate God, enjoy rock, prefer jazz, mad about wine, shag guys."
(A baker's dozen.)
SUNDAY JANUARY 27, 2008
From: Darren Laing, Johannesburg, South Africa
Hey Simon. I notice your Eating Out column hasn't been updated for 2007. This isn't good enough man. It's my favourite bit of the website and you're letting me down by not getting it done. In three weeks I'll be leaving for my first European business trip of the year. I always try to eat at the places you recommend so could you hurry up and post it.
You know what, Darren - it might have been nice to put 'please' at the end of your email. Because, while it's good to know people actually pay attention to what I write, I don't like being nagged. Moreover, if your table manners are on a par with your request for me to write these reviews, I can't imagine you'll be much welcomed in any of the establishments I write about. So maybe I'll do the restaurants a favour and delay writing about them until you're back home again in darkest Africa.
SATURDAY JANUARY 26, 2008
From: Kate Lancing, Detroit, Michigan, USA
Hey there Mr Simon Napier-Bell. I've got one great big question for you. You so often go on about disliking religion and yet there you are at the top of the page in front of a Buddha, your hands in something of a religious position. Does that meant your time living in Thailand has swayed you towards Buddhism?
I certainly have no objection to someone announcing to all and sundry that he's come to the conclusion there's no God and everything's down to each individual, which is what Buddha did. However you mistake my pious posture for something it wasn't intended to be. It was meant as nothing more than a welcome to the delights of my website, in particular the piece on the pleasures of dealing with major record companies. Though perhaps, on second thoughts, it was intended as a gentle 'fuck you' to all those who work for them. Tomorrow the piece will disappear and the subject will be closed.
FRIDAY JANUARY 25, 2008
From: Caspar Llewellyn-Smith, Editor Observer Music Magazine, London, UK
Hello there. Well, I have to say, all the thanks is due you. A triumph. Many people have said how much they liked it, including Rob Partridge (who you may know) and Lesley Douglas, the controller of Radio 2. And indeed, I'm told by Miranda Sawyer - who's in the course of writing an epic piece on the majors' problems for Observer Review - that everyone she's spoken to hates it - that is, everyone at the majors. Excellent. Job done. Very best, as always.
Hi Caspar. Yes, this wouldn't be a good moment for me to go to the office of a major in London to try and get a deal. But what could be nicer than having deleted such an unpleasant task from life's list of necessary evils? Anyway, most people at the majors know that every word of it is true and they've been saying much the same between themselves for years now. By the way, I've just seen the actual magazine (as against the online version which is horribly bereft of illustration).
The illustrations are great - even better than the faked-up mug shots I used at the top of the piece on my website. Thanks!
THURSDAY JANUARY 24, 2008
From: Alexis Parr, London, UK
Hello Simon. I'm not in the mood to write an epistle but I've just read
your insightful Observer article on the demise of the 'record
industry'
so thought I would say how much I
enjoyed it. One of the first singles I ever bought was Joe Tex's I GOTCHA.
I had forgotten all about this great sound, so loved the rather touching yarn about him. Now then... What cuisine do you favour for a cold night in January London? If you're feeling rich I wouldn't mind going to China Tang at the Dorchester? However if you want to stick to Kensington we could always go somewhere local like Clarkes - too stuffy?? Or Zuma in Knightsbridge? Or Indian maybe? The Indian in Abingdon Rd, W8, which is handy, but noisy and delhi belihish. Or Chinese? How about Memories of China? Just let me know your requirements.
Hi Alexis. The main requirement is that it's comfortable and easy to talk, which rather rules out noisy Zumas. China Tang would be perfect, but it's not just ordinary expensive, it's annoyingly expensive, like the Connaught Grill Room where lamb chops (with vegetables not included) are over fifty quid. Anyway, let's eat near where I'm staying in Kensington. Clarke's, as you say, is a bit stuffy. Memories of China has those annoying tables for two where you sit opposite each other with the people at the next table as close to you as the person you're eating with. I like right angle dining, or both on the same side on a nice banquette (aren't I a fuss-pot!!). Indian would be OK. We don't have any good ones in Pattaya - 'good' meaning the quality of the food, not the buzz - for instance that posh one on Ken High Street, despite its Michelin stars, is just a big noisebox! And the one in Abbingdon Road is impossible in winter because every time the door opens a freezing gale blows through the place. Totally untrendy but utterly civilised is Poissonerie, on Sloane Avenue, probably the best fish restaurant in the world. Let's make it that one.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 23, 2008
From: Cecil Pumping, Bournemouth, UK
Simon. You're always ranting on about religion and in some ways I can agree. Even so, surely you can think of an occasion where religion helped you in some way.
Only one. In my twenties I had an emergency appendicitus and there were complications. After the operation I found myself in a public ward at Wembley Hospital drifting in and out of sleep and being fed through a tube. I was vaguely aware of daily guests and the way they looked more and more untruthful each tiime they told me how well I was looking. Finally I became aware that my bed was being moved and asked the nurse pushing it why.
"People who might die during the night are moved to the end of the ward,” she explained off-handedly. “That way they're next to the double doors and It’s easier to push them away in the morning.”
Dying sounded quite exciting but I didn't feel up to thinking about it so I went back to sleep. The next thing I knew I was awake again and there was a vicar at the end of my bed moving his hands through the air and mumbling in Latin. For a moment I thought I was back at school and it was the loathsome chaplin so I sat bolt upright and yelled "piss off" (though after a fortnight without food I doubt it was much of a yell).
He wandered off, but not without having aroused my interest in what was happening. I pulled out my drip feeds, dragged myself off the bed and managed to totter to the bathroom. In the mirror I saw an apparition - another me - twenty pounds lighter and unshaven for two weeks.
I thought, “So that’s what it looks like to die". And immediately started to get better.
Two days later I was back at the other end of the ward, receiving vistors and eating chocolates.
Thank-you vicar!
THURSDAY JANUARY 24, 2008
From: Alexis Parr, London, UK
Hello Simon. I'm not in the mood to write an epistle but I've just read
your insightful Observer article on the demise of the 'record
industry'
so thought I would say how much I
enjoyed it. One of the first singles I ever bought was Joe Tex's I GOTCHA.
I had forgotten all about this great sound, so loved the rather touching yarn about him. Now then... What cuisine do you favour for a cold night in January London? If you're feeling rich I wouldn't mind going to China Tang at the Dorchester? However if you want to stick to Kensington we could always go somewhere local like Clarkes - too stuffy?? Or Zuma in Knightsbridge? Or Indian maybe? The Indian in Abingdon Rd, W8, which is handy, but noisy and delhi belihish. Or Chinese? How about Memories of China? Just let me know your requirements.
Hi Alexis. The main requirement is that it's comfortable and easy to talk, which rather rules out noisy Zumas. China Tang would be perfect, but it's not just ordinary expensive, it's annoyingly expensive, like the Connaught Grill Room where lamb chops (with vegetables not included) are over fifty quid. Anyway, let's eat near where I'm staying in Kensington. Clarke's, as you say, is a bit stuffy. Memories of China has those annoying tables for two where you sit opposite each other with the people at the next table as close to you as the person you're eating with. I like right angle dining, or both on the same side on a nice banquette (aren't I a fuss-pot!!). Indian would be OK. We don't have any good ones in Pattaya - 'good' meaning the quality of the food, not the buzz - for instance that posh one on Ken High Street, despite its Michelin stars, is just a big noisebox! And the one in Abbingdon Road is impossible in winter because every time the door opens a freezing gale blows through the place. Totally untrendy but utterly civilised is Poissonerie, on Sloane Avenue, probably the best fish restaurant in the world. Let's make it that one.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 23, 2008
From: Cecil Pumping, Bournemouth, UK
Simon. You're always ranting on about religion and in some ways I can agree. Even so, surely you can think of an occasion where religion helped you in some way.
Only one. In my twenties I had an emergency appendicitus and there were complications. After the operation I found myself in a public ward at Wembley Hospital drifting in and out of sleep and being fed through a tube. I was vaguely aware of daily guests and the way they looked more and more untruthful each tiime they told me how well I was looking. Finally I became aware that my bed was being moved and asked the nurse pushing it why.
"People who might die during the night are moved to the end of the ward,” she explained off-handedly. “That way they're next to the double doors and It’s easier to push them away in the morning.”
Dying sounded quite exciting but I didn't feel up to thinking about it so I went back to sleep. The next thing I knew I was awake again and there was a vicar at the end of my bed moving his hands through the air and mumbling in Latin. For a moment I thought I was back at school and it was the loathsome chaplin so I sat bolt upright and yelled "piss off" (though after a fortnight without food I doubt it was much of a yell).
He wandered off, but not without having aroused my interest in what was happening. I pulled out my drip feeds, dragged myself off the bed and managed to totter to the bathroom. In the mirror I saw an apparition - another me - twenty pounds lighter and unshaven for two weeks.
I thought, “So that’s what it looks like to die". And immediately started to get better.
Two days later I was back at the other end of the ward, receiving vistors and eating chocolates.
Thank-you vicar!
TUESDAY JANUARY 22, 2008
From: Sarah Robertson, Sunderland, UK
Hi Simon. About your piece in the Observer - after your years in the music business isn't slagging off record companies like biting the hand that feeds you?
No! Quite the opposite. Selling a penny's worth of vinyl for a pound was always a great trick - you needed a label, a nice sleeve, a good song… and damn it... an artist. For the record companies that's always been the problem – the bloody artist. Mostly they leave the A&R department to deal wth it while they get on with more important things like devising contracts that will allow them to underpay royalties. The manager is hired by the artist to do battle with the record company. I can't pretend it isn't fun, and the best of us usually win. What's more, in many cases we get to quite like the enemy. It's like the way Europe used to be with the communist East - it was more fun that way. You travelled with a frisson of excitement - the West was good, the East was bad, like black and white, like artists and record companies (whose disappearance, I admit, will make the music industry seem a bit grey). But getting back to your original question...
A manager's remuneration should come only from the artist. A record company's hands are there for the biting.
MONDAY JANUARY 21, 2008
From: Paul Granville, Shanghai, China
Hi Simon. I
felt compelled to write to say what a great piece you wrote about record companies. The other Paul and I were talking about you in my bar last week and were wondering what would be your Ten Tunes for "Desert Island Discs". Can you enlighten us? By the way, you're looking peaky in the new picture you put up on the site.
Take care
Peaky? Looks more like 'porky'. to me. Taken after lots of New Year's indulgence and a three-day party in Chiang Mai.
Re Desert Island Discs. The programme seems SO out of date both technically and conceptually. I was once asked to do it and spent a week pondering what discs to choose, then couldn't make it for some reason (off travelling I think). I've no idea what I chose then, nor what I would choose now. Ten records played endlessly for years on end sounds hideous. Still, if I'm ever asked again I expect I'll go along and give them ten titles just for sake of doing such a classic show. But for you and Paul, better the truth. I think I'd prefer silence.
SUNDAY JANUARY 20, 2008
From: John Dang, Manchester, UK
Hi Simon. Re: Guy Hands. I think he's the best thing to have happened to EMI. Shrewd
business man who is about to cut 2000 of 5500 jobs. Too right. Crap record
company, trying to sell crap, with a crap business model. He's going to
strip it down. EMI will rise from this bigger and better than all the
other majors. I am so confident I might even buy some shares.
I can't possibly object to Guy Hands sacking half his record company's employees - the more the merrier - you know my thoughts on record companies, just read the piece on the left. But Mr. Hands doesn't seem to realise that a record company's principal asset is its roster of currently saleable artists. He says he's going to start from square one and pour money into A&R. But he'll soon find out that breaking new artists is more expensive than paying for established ones to stick around. And does he really think the new ones will be any less difficult and demanding than the old ones? Besides, from the first audition of new artists to the time when they're selling profitably will be at least two years. By which time the public won't be buying records anyway. So if you want to - go ahead and buy EMI shares. I'd rather buy lottery tickets.
SATURDAY JANUARY 19, 2008
From: Gail, Toronto, Canada
hi simon... remember me??? well how could you!!! you signed me in the '70s when i was steve graham... you were going to make me a superstar but it fizzled after one recording... my fault... crazy on drugs and cock... off all over the place...too darned unreliable...
i came across you're website... thought I'd email... hope you're well... if you're wondering about the new name i had a sex-change... emigrated to Canada... got married... had three children... (from husband's first wife)... now a granny...
From teen idol boy singing star to ageing granny - it's a story worthy of any of the tabloids, isn't it? Except, as you point out, you were never a star. Actually, I remember you well. To tell the truth, I didn't even know you were gay, so you must have been much more discreet than you remember. But I do recall you were an argumentative little sod and fell out big-time with the producer half-way through your first recording session. Which is why things fell apart. Anyway, good to know you found your niche in life.
FRIDAY JANUARY 18, 2008
From: Joel Quenby, Bangkok, Thailand
I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn. We were in touch re Futon a little while back. I'm a mate of David Coker's. I'm originally a writer/editor, though currently working as an advertising copywriter at InterOne, Bangkok. I don't like advertising much,
though; I find it soulless, diva-ish, subjective and highly repetitive. I'd like to get into screenplays (have just started my first) and back to some more creative writing.
This LinkedIn thing! Normally I refuse to get involved with these personal networks (Facebook, and all those shared-address invites), but LinkedIn is the only one, on just a few occasions, that I've agreed to sign up to. I've actually registered myself on it too - more as a matter of interest than anything else - just to see what, if anything, flows from it.
The few people whose LinkedIn networks I've agreed to join have all been old friends or established music industry people. I feel I shouldn't lend my name lightly to anyone who asks, and apart from one phone call you made to me, I really don't know you. Moreover, you appear to take the David Coker side of things in Futon's internal dispute while I'm instinctively on the other side. To be honest I know none of the facts, only what both sides tell me. There's a gay/straight thing here too. The gay side, of course, tells things with a much more amusing bent.
So here's a deal. Send me a thoroughly convincing and entertaining email as to why I would benefit from joining your network on LindkedIn, and I'll do it.
THURSDAY JANUARY 17, 2008
From: Alex Needham, London, UK
Hello Simon. I'm emailing to ask if I can please interview you for BUTT magazine, which is a quarterly publication devoted to interesting homosexuals. In its six-year history it has photographed and interviewed everyone from Michael Stipe and John Waters to Jon Savage and Gore Vidal. Internationally distributed, its contributors include photographers like Wolfgang Tillmans. You can see back issues at the website: buttmagazine.com.
I'm certain an interview with you would delight the BUTT readership. A photographer would also need to take your portrait (clothing optional).
You might think me perverse, but even though that photo of me swimming naked is prominently displayed on the website, I'd rather keep my clothes on. I shall be in London only briefly - arriving midnight Monday with an early morning meeting Tuesday and a talk in Guildford straight afterwards. I'll be back in the hotel at 7pm with a dinner scheduled for 7.30. The next morning I'm off early to Leeds to give another talk before flying to New York in the evening. Looks like the only time I've got free is 7 to 7.30 on Tuesday evening. Since I'm planning to use that time for a shower, it looks like you might get your naked picture after all.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 16, 2008
From: Nicolai, Prowse, London, UK
Dear Simon, I am sure you have a million and one e-mails coming to this e-mail address, but I'm e-mailing anyway. I was given a copy of your book which I have enjoyed reading a lot - it has filled me with joy and awe and many other wonderful superlatives. Now I'm going to cut to the chase. I am a solo artist. I have been inspired by your hands-on approach to contact you for advice on how I can make the most of me.
Re those emails - not a million and one, a trillion and one - but I can't pretend I'm not delighted to get compliments. I listened to your myspace tracks. They were good, which simply isn't good enough. Your voice doesn't grab the listener strongly enough. They weren't sufficiently distinctive. Perhaps there's an element of you that's playing safe. That's the part of everyone that kills careers. You just have to let yourself go. If you still don't turn anyone on, your career is finished. But if you don't try it, your career is finished anyway.
TUESDAY JANUARY 15, 2008
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
hi
simon... i actually enjoy guy hands... he's this year's rock n roll pig.
every now and then the business of rock n roll needs its pigs to rape it...
just like we need our lean rock stars to become fat and die on the toilet. the comedy for me is not so much guy hands but last year's stars completetly over estimating their position in todays dynasty.
look at that bedwetter chris martin from coldplay.... he thinks he can walk away from emi like radiohead and all will be tickety boo...
but he's gonna have a rude awakening because what works for radiohead ain't nessesarily gonna work for him.
i also love how guy hands has dealings in the sewage business...
sometimes the universe seems to have a shockingly pristine order to itself.
Like I said, dealing with artists is about as glamorous as cleaning toilets, and often no more pleasant. Even so, the artist remains the music industry's basic commodity and getting rid of good ones isn't likely to be a prelude to better profits. Guy Hands' experience in the sewage business has obviously left him with the view that shit has to be flushed away. But when you're dealing with artists, more often than not it has to be swallowed.
MONDAY JANUARY 14, 2008
From: Simon G. White, London, UK
Simon,
I was interested to see your comments about Guy Hands. He really hasn't
understood the dynamics of the artist/service provider. In the
record industry whether we like it or not we are all servants of a
successful artist.
Servants, eh? Well I always said managing an artist was about as glamourous as cleaning toilets. But you're right. The record industry for the last forty years has been solely about finding and marketing artists. They were the annoying accessory that record companies needed in order to sell their cheap little pieces of vinyl at a thousand per cent profit.
Mr. Hands may be right too. If records are about to disappear, why keep on the artists? Why have record companies? Why have Mr. Hands? My guess is he'll eventually break up EMI and sell it in bits - publishing, back catalogue, real estate, etc. And everyone will lose money except...
...Mr Hands.
SUNDAY JANUARY 13, 2008
From: Edward Craig, Auckland, New Zealand
I noticed in your emails this week that a friend of yours died - your doctor - and you wrote most charmingly to his (I'm not sure) wife? sister? I thought how amazingly this contrasted with a few weeks ago when you were disturbingly insensitive to the bereavement of someone else, totally refusing them any sympathy whatsoevr. Presumably the deceased person in that case was someone you liked less. But either way, don't you think, in death all people should be granted a certain respect?
Respect, simply on the basis that they're dead? Piffle! When odious people die I'm delighted. By the way, you seem to have misread my email to the twat who wanted to use the death of a mutual friend as an excuse to dump himself on my doorstep. His boyfriend, who died, was someone whose company I enjoyed a lot; the email writer himself was someone I could't stand. In the case of my old friend Barrie Cooper, I liked him enormously. And when someone like that dies it's a pretty sad affair. But since the person who's gone plays no part in it, it's entirely between you and your own mind how emotionally disruptive you allow it to become. Like most things that don't put a gloss on the day, I prefer to play it down rather than up.
SATURDAY JANUARY 12, 2008
From: Iain Cooper, Dubai
Hi Simon,
I was thinking about that Quentin Crisp recording.
Did you say it was a Peggy Lee song?
Anyway, I had the idea to get Robbie Wiliams to do it as a duet.
He's apparently working on his second swing album and it may be right up his street.
He enjoys the old sexual duality game and both he and Quentin are quintessentially English icons.
Just a thought. I may be quite wrong!
Or maybe quite right....
I made the track with Quentin in 1978. He wrote a chapter about the procedure in the next book he wrote. The song was Peggy Lee's 1971 hit, 'Where Did They Go'. He did it in a half-spoken, half sung, French chanteuse-erish sort of way. I can't remember why I wasn't more persistent about getting it released, but I just gave up. Sometimes record companies could piss me off like that - just too negative to bother with.
You may be right about Robbie Williams, it might just appeal to him. But do you know... the tape is still in the same drawer where it was three months ago when I said I'd get it transfered to digital the next day. Tomorrow, though, I really will dig it out and get it copied - I haven't heard it for nearly thirty years. If it sounds any good I'll see if he's interested. Good one Iain!
FRIDAY JANUARY 11, 2008
From: Mike Atkins, Bangkok Post, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi Simon.
Following the demise of CD Warehouse and EMI's Thailand operations, I'm putting together a feature article for 'real.time'. Wonder if you fancy sharing a few pearls of wisdom with Bangkok Post readers about the changing face of music. We'll talk to a local band that releases music online; a record company person about adapting strategies; a music fan about their views on downloading, and (hopefully) a world-famous, skinny-dipping music mogul who is delighted that record companies are finally getting their come-uppance.
Funny you should ask. Only today I was asked by a Brisish music magazine - 'Is the record company dead?' I answered "I hope so" but that wasn't enough for them so I had to expand it to 200 words. Also, on January 20th the Observer Music Magazine will publish a long piece I've done for them on the same subject, 5000 (irreverent) words. The gist of it is... for years now the majors have been appointing senior executives to their American companies who have no knowledge of the music industry. They think only of profit and understand nothing about artists. Conning artists into signing with you and supplying you with music is the first thing any music executive has to learn to do. Walter Yetnikoff, Clive Davis, Berry Gordy and Ahmet Ertegen are just a few of the great record company executives of the past who could be criticised for too easily going along with the corporation's desire to underpay artists' royalties, but at least they knew how to play the game of keeping the artist happy - give him praise, big advances, gold discs, hotel suites, limos and drugs. The more recent bunch hasn't a clue. It's come to a head with the grossly arrogant Guy Hands, who's bought EMI. He has no idea how vital artists are to his profit margins. First Radiohead quit; now Robbie Williams is refusing to honour his contract. And so too are Gorillaz and Coldplay. Mr Hands is simply speeding up the final demise of all record companies. Which is wonderful to see. Give me a call and I'll elaborate further.
THURSDAY JANUARY 10, 2008
From: Jane Cooper, London, UK
There is no easy way to write this:
The Grim Reaper – that mystical man with black cloak and scythe – finally came in and gently; oh so very gently; took my beloved Barrie whilst he slept. I was able to have a peaceful afternoon lying with my head on his pillow, feeling his need for his final rest; there were no more expressions of love left to say; all that needed to be said was said and all that needed to be done had been done and now for us all is the memory of his enormous love for mankind and the memory of his joy for the love of life.
Funeral will be on the 15th January, which would have been his 85th birthday.
Hi Jane. Such sad news, but the nicest and most touching email relaying it. I'm SO happy I came to see Barrie in July. It was the most amazingly enjoyable afternoon and left me in high spirits for weeks afterwards. At the beginning of our chat we touched on the whole boring subject of getting past our sell by date and when to give up on the whole thing. And I'm pleased we did. Barrie's observations on the matter were encouraging and, as always with him, wonderfully drily amusing.
I'm afraid I'm not going to be able make it to the funeral but I'll put the date in my diary anyway - not because I might make it after all, but to ensure I think about it on the day.
I owe Barrie much in the way of good health, but he was more than just my doctor - we were real friends. For years we had regular dinners together with wine and conversation and brandy rambling on into the night. He was also an ally when it came to business. If any of the artists I managed were unwell (physical or mental, it made no difference), I could send them to Barrie knowing he would quickly get them back to me in good working order. He was so extraordinarily clever.
Do you know how we met....?
I was 26 - a young pop manager round town - and for two years I'd suffered a continuous raggedy sore throat, just on and on. I'd been to every Harley Street specialist and absolutely no-one had come up with an answer. One day I was round at Clive Donner's house (the film-director, whom I was working with on What's New Pussycat) when Barrie popped in to give him an injection. I was sitting quietly in a corner of the living room reading a magazine when Barrie suddenly said to me (whom he'd never met before), "Doesn't that post-nasal drip bother you? I mean, you must have a sore throat pretty much all the time."
I was amazed. And he became my doctor at once. In some ways he still is, because he taught me more than anyone just how much we should trust our own judgement with regard to health and as much as possible be our own doctors.
Lots of love - hope all goes well.
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 9, 2008
From: James Young, London, UK
Dear Simon... my band GLUE has been going since 1995... after 13 years the line up and tunes have never been better... a female fronted rock act with catchy tunes and a desire to play to 10,000 people NOT 10... management seems the crucial missing link... we could walk into the NME offices naked apart from top hats and no one would bat an eyelid... which is why we are coming to you... maybe you have a better idea for the first publicity stunt.
So - after thirteen years you're planning your first publicity stunt - sounds like you're on quite a roll. I'm not sure I could keep up with you.
TUESDAY JANUARY 8, 2008
From: Luke Bainbridge, Deputy editor, Observer Music Magazine, London, UK
Hi Simon,
happy new year!
I'm so glad this is finally happening - and it is believe me, I've seen it
being laid out.
I was amused to see Caspar's email crop up on your website.
Sorry for delay in replying but I ended up in hospital having a minor op on Christmas Eve so I've been off the radar for a little
while.
Hope you had a more festive time than me.
Hi Luke.
Thanks for letting me know the piece is finally in process. Your bad luck with good health seems endless. I hope this year's better for you.
Now that the piece is under way, how about another one? I spent half of last year (and will spend half of this one too), consulting with an Australian company who are trawling the whole of Asia for new talent - from India to Japan and all in between. We've seen great raunchy groups playing ethnic fusion and also heard endless Whitney Houston cover versions - from Mumbai to Hokkaido. Some surprising things too - a prim little Vietnamese girl in a music school who auditioned with I Will Survive and sung the words, "I should have changed the fucking lock". She'd searched for the lyrics on the internet and come across the version by Cake (U.S. 90s geek-rock group). She had no idea what it meant - nor did her teacher who was standing right next to her.
MONDAY JANUARY 7, 2008
From: Bert Jordan, London, UK
I noticed last week an email from the editor of Observer Music Magazine who was anxious to apolgise to you for something or other. Looking back through your old emails I found a fair bit of 'previous' on the same subject. Apparently there's an article he hasn't yet published but now says he will on January 20th. What's it about Simon?
The editor of the Observer Music Magazine - Caspar Lewellyn-Smith - received a piece from me some eight months ago which kept getting delayed. Each time it was lined up to go something else came along and usurped it. These things happen in magazine publishing and don't much bother me, it was Caspar's lack of communication which became a bit of a sore between us, but that's now resolved (see his excellent New Year's resolution, January 1st email, below). The piece is about the ethical degeneration of record companies over the last forty years and their imminent demise. Not, in my opinion, an unhappy ending.
SUNDAY JANUARY 6, 2008
From: Bobbi Marchini, Villa Christina, Zakynthos, Greece
Hi Simon,
what a lovely giggle this all is. It looks like you've begun what could become the Great Willie Debate... or perhaps the Free Willie Movement.
Personally I'd like to see as many well known willies as possible following your example and being photographed starkers in the water sans artifice or gravity. There is something winsome about a floating member... not aggressive and sitting up barking for attention but lazily tagging along behind it's owner.
The good news is THE BOOK is roaring along and you gave me some good advice with your comments about writing. I decided to write about what amuses me most and that is the characters of this island and what they eat. Believe me there are so many eccentrics here still I don't know how to fit them all in. How do you introduce a character into a cook book, for example, who swears he saw neridas dancing in the forest with a small hairy bloke who played a flute?
So Simon a big hug as always. I have to go clean out my room as the bloody parrot refused to go back into his cage last night and so spent the night on a curtain rod and then this morning once again refused . A chase ensued and it got a bit messy. It seems I'm cursed with opiniated animals. He's now sitting outside mumbling and cursing and I'm knee deep in parrot poo.
Love to you both.
Hi Bobbi - how nice to receive an email on a bad-hangover morning that requires me to say nothing more than, "I'm glad the book's going well and I'm sorry about the parrot." Thanks for giving me a day off.
SATURDAY JANUARY 5, 2008
From: Anton Renshawe-Strack, London, UK
Hi Simon,
I guess you've already seen page 14 of Thursday's Indy (Pandora - scroll down to last item). You must feel honoured, especially that lovely pic. Pity that they're too prim to publish THE picture. (Missed it myself - will you ever put it back up?).
Hi Anton. It's good to get confirmation that the British press keep an eye on my website. Anyway... just for you (and dozens of other people who keep asking) the picture is below. It seems a great pity that the Independent wasted the opportunity to run such a beautiful shot. Still - 'Having a Whale of a Time' was a nice heading, and it's true that one reader wrote comparing me with the Beluga whale in Coney Island aquarium. And another said it reminded him of the Nirvana sleeve for 'Nevermind'. But it's my willie that seems to have got most people going. It's amazing to me that what seems such a normal happy picture should make so many people to want to express an opinion - not all adverse either.
FRIDAY JANUARY 4, 2008
From: Nick Briggs, London, UK
Hi Simon: Having got the reissued CD of "Roger The engineer", obviously you're heavily featured in the sleeve notes. Did nobody realise the innuendo in the title? It says Keith Relf tried releasing a couple of solo singles but he barely even did anything and wasn't even in the studio for "Blue Sands"! What was all that about? I would guess the record label have tried paying as little royalties as possible? The making of this album really would make a fascinating program, I may make a few calls and look into it... I'm puzzled that "Shapes of Things" isnt on it, that has to be a Yardbirds classic if not their definitive song.
Hi Nick. I haven't seen the sleeve notes, but the Yardbirds and I never got on too well so I guess the sleeve is their opportunity to say what they want about me. In my book 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me' there's a whole chapter about making this album, and since I may have gilded the lily a touch (or perhaps 'shat on it'), I guess the group have the right to look at it from their side. Anyone making a TV programme about it would do well to look at both sides. Re Keith's solo singles, I believe there was a quickly done 'B' side for one of them in which he didn't participate much, but that was the way in those days. And regarding 'Shapes of Things' - well of course it's not on the album - it never was. Roger The Engineer was a specific album - the Yardbirds only studio album - it would be quite wrong to add extra tracks to it. Anyway... anyone wanting the truly definitive story should buy my book.
THURSDAY JANUARY 3, 2008
From: Martin Lloyd-Elliot, London, UK
My dear Simon. I read your posts most days and often laugh til I cry.
Things are tip top here - my two boys are turning out to be terrific fun, full of life and laughter, and of course my darling Helen is brilliant to boot. Work is good but I long for the kind of adventures you are having travelling all the time around Asia. I seldom envy anyone, but today you have the full nine yards. How was New Years Eve by the way? I have very happy memories of the last time I was with you in Pattaya for New Years Eve. Three memories stand out: the delectable gourmet meal we all had together - the kids holding massive fireworks in their hands as they let them off in the street - being in bed with three girls all at the same time! Hurrah.
All love to you both.
Martin - you delightful straight beast - how wonderful to hear from you. I still can't quite come to terms with you being a devoted father and family man rather than a perfect philanderer. Glad to hear work is going well, presumably you're still putting pop stars on the couch and curing them of the dreadful weariness of being rich and famous! This year's New Year's event was not quite up to the usual standard - normally we are ten with gay outnumbering straight. This year the outnumbering was reversed, which naturally made for a duller evening. And we were only six in all. The irrepressible Jerome in a leaf green suit with his teenage Thai wife - and my brother-in-law and companion, he now being a Pattaya resident, my sister and him having grown slightly apart. Your cheery presence (plus a few more queens) would have made the world of difference. Never mind, tomorrow Yo and I are off to Chiang Mai where my old friend Ron Franklin is having a three-day 60th birthday bash - over fifty people at the party and it goes on for 72 hours. Meanwhile, here are some pictures of New Year's Eve. Have a great 2008!
WEDNESDAY JANUARY 2, 2008
From: Ginny Slade, Birmingham, UK
hi simon... before 2007 fades from your memory... please... your best meal of the year??
Best meal? I had fifty best meals!
Perhaps the most enjoyable was with Yo on the Terrace of the Monaco Hotel, next to the Gand Canal on a balmy August evening. We had linguine tossed with local clams followed by rack of lamb devoured to the last morsel (see above). Perfect place, perfect weather, perfect food, perfect person to be with.
If you're going to Venice, stay at the Monaco, it's by far the nicest of the 5-star hotels. We didn't. We stayed at the ancient, decrepit, museum-like Danieli. It has the best rooftop terrace in the world so you breakfast in a Canaletto landscape, but the rooms haven't been upgraded since the mid-twenties. In terms of decor, that's a matter of taste. In terms of ancient beds and sagging matresses, it's just bad hotel keeping.
TUESDAY JANUARY 1, 2008
From: Caspar Llewellyn-Smith, Editor Observer Music Magazine, London, UK
My one and only New Year's resolution (a little early, but never mind):
Not
to be such a CUNT to you.
Indeed, to be all good things, or at least a vast vast improvement.
Let's start by saying, once and for all, the piece runs in January... the
issue out 20 Jan.
That OK? And it'll be jolly jolly good. Happy new year!
Caspar - that's great news - I mean, that you've managed to send an email.
Good news too that you're finally going to run the piece. The alterations we talked about (very small ones, really) are attached. If you want to improve on them - add, delete, alter - please do so, but let me have a glance first.
Let's hope from here on we can get our emails flowing as well as we did our conversation over lunch last time. All the best. Have a great new year.
MONDAY DECEMBER 31, 2007
From: John Spizer, Los Angeles, California, USA
Hey Simon... I remember you telling me that you and Yo met on New Years Eve, which means - if you put two and two cleverly together - that today must be your anniversary. So... Happy That, and Happy New Year too. What are you up to? Something nice?
Thanks John. You remembered right! We met pretty much on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1989. So this is our 18th.
Like every other New Year since we met, we'll have dinner tonight with half a dozen other people who have little interest in our anniversary but lots in welcoming the New Year. So for lunch we took ourselves to Toy's seafood, ten kilometres out of town on the way to Sataheep. I've written about this place in my 'Eating Out' section. The restaurant is built on stilts over the sea and is a ragtag mess of ancient floorboards, corrugated iron ceiling, wobbly wooden tables and plastic chairs. But however hot the day a cool breeze blows and the seafood is as fresh as can be. Today we had sweet clams, rock lobster and white snapper - with a bottle of champagne. Now we're going to have a nap.
Tonight we'll do the New Year thing with friends.
SUNDAY DECEMBER 30, 2007
From: Alan Estenberg, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Simon - over the last year I've enjoyed your candid comments, your tart put-downs, your no-punches-pulled responses, and I even quite liked the smile on your face in the underwater photo at the top of the page this week. But really - did you have to show us your willie? You could easily have removed it with Photolab and I presume you left it in only because of your insatiable desire to provoke. So there... Now you can write me one of your abusive emails. But I won't change my mind. As a matter of simple good taste these things are better not shown.
I can't be bothered to write you an abusive email, you sound too stupid to deserve one. It's not just your inabilty to recognise the intense charm of my naked self, it's the whole concept of bending the truth to suit your midget morality. That the photo is there as it was taken is simply a matter of of honest journalism. There were several pictures in the set which didn't show my rather delightful naughty-bits but none of them had that nice smile on my face. When I found a picture with a smile, there was my little sea anenome keeping it company. Surely you wouldn't want the picture to lie?
SATURDAY DECEMBER 29, 2007
From: Vicki Wickham, New York, NY, USA
We're home and happy! We were booked for St Barths with Howell and Peter Brown but I fractured my patella (broke my knee cap!) going into Claridges!!! At least it wasn't Starbucks. Anyway, am off crutches and out of cast thank heavens.
Re Shelby Lynne's Dusty album... a LOT of people love it! Are you familiar with Bob Lefsetz? You should be! Opinionated like us! But occasionally good info or thoughts. (His quote: "This record won't enter the chart at number one, but it could sell FOREVER!")
Happy New Year and lots of love. And to Yo of course.
Gosh Vicki - how could you go breaking your knee? And in England too where they'll pay you nothing for it. If only you'd broken it going into the Waldorf or the Plaza you'd be rich for the rest of the year. (I mean - next year too!)
I heard some of the Dusty album on Shelby Lynne's myspace.
And I've already read Bob Lefsetz's plug. I hope he's right, but even if he is, it's not for me. She sings beautifully, and the voice is just perfectly recorded, but I think the emptiness of Phil Ramone's production will bore most people - does me! Very reserved piano and endless brushes on snares (sounds like a jazz drummer in a cocktail bar). I guess Doug Morris and that stingy crowd at UNI didn't want to pay any more than they had to so they persuaded Shelby it was perfect as it was. But it sounds like re-mastered demos. No lushness or complexity in the backing at all. It was originally Barry Manilow's idea for her to do the album; what a pity he didn't produce it himself like he did with Dionne Warwick and Bette Midler. And what a pity Clive Davis didn't grab it for BMG. (Anyway I still haven't heard 'You Don't Have To Say You Love Me', and I guess for us that's the one that really counts.)
Lots of love to you and Nona. Have a brilliantly good New Year.
FRIDAY DECEMBER 28, 2007
From: Gregory gray, Hertfordshire, UK
Simon... this piece of footage by Nina Simone is just staggering...
the poor cow is just exasperated by the road of life itself... she's lost all patience with people.
There are moments in that trainwreck that are so emotionally masterful... I'm totally convinced by her.
You wouldn't have wanted to hang with her in a million years... but I sympathize all the same. Lucky for the likes of me (and you also, I suspect) we developed a more upbeat sense of absurdity as a coping mechanism.
The funny thing about her piano playing is SHE KNOWS she can do it standing on her head... she's almost laughing at or resenting her own capability.
Sums up all we were talking about the other week - she ended up a totally pissed-off unstable genius - unbelievable technique and emotional fluency but on the way to being pure dotty.
I saw her several times like this (always wished she wasn't) but always thought perhaps this time she wouldn't be (because many years before I'd seen her when she was just perfect).
THURSDAY DECEMBER 27, 2007
From: Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
Simon:
Thank you for the picture... I laughed so hard, I got chest pains.
I gotta hand it to you... It takes a large man to publish a photo of himself looking like a Beluga Whale from Coney Island aquarium...
Who took that snapshot?
Large man!? BlimeyBibi, that's the truth these days - I've just reached nineteen stone (which is an Englishman's way of not letting an American know what he really weighs). All pretensions at slimming down seem to have been thrown aside for an orgy of seasonal gorging. At least it's good to know I look as at home in water as a creature intended for it. Beluga whales are cute - I just checked them out on the internet - how nice to be compared to one (see below). The picture of me swimming was taken by Yo. We have a basement room with a window onto the pool. Usually used to admire prettier swimmers than me. Happy New Year!
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 26, 2007
From: Simon Henderson, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi Simon! I'm just bursting to see you again. Happy Christmas!!!
Goodness! How do you do that? It looks positively dangerous. Be sure to let the air out slowly or you'll get the bends. On second thoughts, I guess it doesn't look that different from me after lunch yesterday. Anyway, to celebrate foolishness, I've put a picture at the top of the page of me having a Christmas Day swim.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 25, 2007
From: Sir Harry Cowell, London, UK
Dear Simon, hard to have much affection for people who work at major labels especially in this day an age, when they all know their days are numbered, but still hang in there for the pay cheque and pension. But one thing does seem sad... the end of those people who worked in artist relations. CBS always had good folk, so it was sad to read that Derek Witt had died. These people really helped keep the peace between the artist / manager and the greedy label and were always good for a meals, hotels, drinks, limos and dare I say drugs etc. etc. They seem a thing of the past, but if only the idiots who ran majors today understood artists and their managers they would have all their staff trained in artist relations.
Hope you and Yo have a great break...and that means fancy restaurants too! Over Christmas I'm keeping an eye on mother dear... now 86, then heading for Lanzarote on 27th for New Year and sun. Hope to see you and Yo in the New Year. Kindest and hug to you both.
Hi Harry - yes, nice old chap Derek Witt. Out with friends last night, I drank an extra glass of brandy in his memory after dinner - a Christmas Eve feast in the German tradition - lobster, pumpkin soup with grilled foie gras, turkey and christmas pud. Which will be followed today with Christmas lunch in the British tradition - at a friend's house with pretty much the same menu I should think. Then there'll be a couple of days looking in the mirror studying the damage.
Have a great time over the holidays. Try to eat and drink at least as much as me.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 20, 2007
From: Simon White, London, UK
Simon,
with regard to the Ian Paisley/Martin McGuiness thing - it quite clear what's happened. McGuiness keeps slipping Paisley a hash cake. Paisley would never know what it was that's making him so happy - but he likes it!
Hash cakes, eh? I'm not at all sure about that, though I do remember back in the '90s Malcom McGuiness was Northern Ireland's surprise representative at a conference in London that was studying better ways of dealing with cannabis than making it illegal. So perhaps it's possible. Though my guess is he's dosing Paisley with ketamine - a more usual way of pacifying wild animals.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 19, 2007
From: Michael Bellis, Holt, Norfolk, UK
Dearest Simone (no this is not a note from Sataheep Francis - just me
being silly).
May I say what a delightful picture
you have as your banner today of yourself and Yotin clearly very happy and enjoying each other's company. Only the horizon is straight! Was it taken in Australia?
As Christmas is just around the corner my present to you this year is an apology. All those years ago
when I was just a young solicitor (1967), I truly did not know that the "client"
taking me to lunch in Soho was (a) your boyfriend at the time (b) that
his rather slick Roller was yours and that (c) the meal was probably on
your expense account !!! The apartment - after we had drunk too much - was as
gorgeous as the young man. Was that yours too?!!! Anyway - sorry,
and I shall make it up to you with a night out when I see you in January.
It seems an awful long time ago still to be worrying about, though for the sake of a good night out at your expense perhaps I should fuel your guilt as much as possible. The odd thing is, the more you talk about the incident, the more I remember you being introduced to me at the time as the said party's lawyer (and there I was thinking I'd never met you until you were already a bald old git). As you've pointed out, things are often not what they seem at the time, but if you were given a good lunch and a pleasureable afternoon to follow why should I worry now? Especially as I'm about to get a lavish dinner from you in return. To prove that everything has a happy ending, here's a picture of us together at Cromer last August. Looking forward to dinner.
With Michael Bellis, Cromer, August, 2007
TUESDAY DECEMBER 18, 2007
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
Paisley is a rancid slab of old showbiz... i hate the cunt.... i hate his whole aesthetic. He's had enough experience now to know that history will be very cruel to him so he's trying to sugar things up before he pops his cloggs and make it seem that the 'apparent' peace in Ireland is a product of his power of reasoning. What IS nice is to see time itself sort things out though. But it's not Paisley. No-one is fooled. In his private hour he feels like he failed... and I take comfort from that. He caused so much hatred and unnessesary polarization.
I used to watch him from my bedroom window upstairs when my dad had the pub. He'd stand on the end of a lorry and bellow... this would be 1972/73. Paisley's voice in those days really scared me... he was relatively young and was so oratorial. All the little hard men would swallow his bullshit and then when he left town the thugs would be galvanized into beating other boys up and such like. I'd watch all this from my bedroom window with David Bowie's Alladin Sane playing on my wee record player.
I'm pleased to hear you think Paisley's still the same as ever. I was worried he'd actually turned nice in his old age, and I wouldn't like that. In my mind he represents pure nastiness and it's difficult to believe there could possibly be anything nice inside him. I remember what a pleasure it was earlier in the year when Gerry Fulwell finally died. I've always seen Paisley in the same light. It would be a pity to have to re-assess him at this late stage.
MONDAY DECEMBER 17, 2007
From: Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
I actually found your response to that manipulative 'bereaved' man to be both refreshing and the height of honesty.
What he was limbering up for was hilariously crass.
He was hoping to use another man's unfortunate loss of life as a currency for love,
among people who he'd been previously disrespectful too.
You get that kind of thing all the time.... cheap cunts playing the pity card when it suits them.
What's even worse is the dumb pricks who buy into it and come running like little ambulances.
In many ways their taste for gratification is worse.
Your letter to that man was a gift. It aligned him with reality.
Thanks for that Gregory (even though it makes three days running on the same subject). It was reassuring to hear from you. It's not often I think I may have made a mistake with my reply but the volume of emails I received telling me I was a heartless pig made me begin to regret what I'd said - not that I thought it was wrong, just that I began to wonder why I should lay myself open to such abuse. The answer is, of course - because I have a website to fill each day. So it's simpy my own fault. But there IS something annoyingly sacrosanct about death. People talk about 'respect for the dead', but damn it, that's the one thing not worth bringing into any discussion on the matter. Gone is gone! Any grief or guilt or desolation that may be felt by those left behind is simply a matter for themselves to sort out. But enough said - the subject's closed. Let's talk about jazz. Since we last exchanged words on it you've sent me two MP3s I've enjoyed enormously - Stan Getz with Bill Evans - and Gene Harris with Scott Hamilton - both tenor sax players with piano accompanists, yet amazingly different. Both perfect for late-night morosing with calvados. By the way, did you see those amazing pictures of Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness on tour together in the USA, genuinely looking as if they were enjoying each other's company. Having been bought up in a Northern Ireland imbued with Paisley's hatred of just about everything, how did that look to you? Has he really turned into a mellow old fart?
SUNDAY DECEMBER 16, 2007
From: Liz Devere, London, UK
Simon, I can't believe you can be so nasty to someone who has just been bereaved. I've always thought of you as both generous and kindly, but what you said yesterday to that poor man shocks me.
You and a dozen other people. But the point is, as unpleasant as death is, it doesn't turn nice people into nasty or nasty into nice. If you want, I'll forward Mr Astern your email address and you can offer him a free stay at your place while he gets his over his loss. However, from what I know of him, despite my refusal to entertain him, he's probably already on his way here, planning to drown his sorrows in a plethora of sex with commercial Thai guys.
SATURDAY DECEMBER 15, 2007
From: Giles Astern, Barcelona, Spain
Hello there Simon. Just a note - a sad one - to let you know that Gerry died last week. His death was hardly unexpected (as you know he'd had all manner of things wrong with him for the last few years), but the manner of his going was. (It was even somewhat entertaining - I mean, in retrospect, for at the time it was devasting.) We were clearing some cupboards and he was up a ladder looking on the high shelves. He found a dress his mother left behind on one of her trips years ago and suddenly felt prompted to put it on and cut a song and dance, but without first coming down the ladder. The result was, he came down the ladder all too fast. He was knocked unconscious and never came round. At least he died singing a song, which I guess he would have wanted. The funeral was yesterday and I need cheering up. Do you think a trip to Thailand would do the trick? Would you find time for me?
I doubt it, Giles. We never got on before, why should we now? Because of Gerry I was always pleasant to you but I can't remember a single occasion in twenty years when you were ever pleasant back. I'm genuinely sorry you've lost him and I'm sure life isn't much fun for you at the moment, but I'm equally sure that if you were to turn up on my doorstep life wouldn't be much fun for me either. So please... find someone who's really a friend to dump your sadness on rather than upgrade me for the purpose. Sorry!
FRIDAY DECEMBER 14, 2007
From: Jay Selwyn, London, UK
Simon - who is this man Francis Connor who always starts his emails to you with the words 'Dearest Simone'? Do you enjoy being called that? Can we all call you Simone too?
You can call me what you like And if your email is worth printing I'll include what you call me. But of course, the standard of your email will have to rise commensurate with the distastefulness of your mode of address. As for Francis; if you read this website regularly, and thus see his not infrequent emails, you will already know that he's a fluent Japanese speaker who for many years worked in the British Embassy in Tokyo. Amongst others he translated for a former Japanese Prime Minister on a trip to Britain and for the Queen and Prince Phillip on their last trip to Japan. Francis now lives in Thailand and works (not too many days a week) for Barclays Bank in Bangkok. He has a delightful silver thatch, a large girth, almost as substantial as mine, and usually wears a kaftan to greet guests to the lunch parties he gives at his apartment in Sataheep where he employs a full-time chef. He also enjoys opening a bottle of white wine with breakfast and at various other time throughout the day. Not that he always does this, for he is admirable at putting work before booze. But there have been lunch parties where his guests have arrived to find a note explaining that he's retired prematurely for his afternoon siesta and could they please enjoy lunch between themselves. As you can imagine, if lunch appointments are subject to such insecurity, dinner dates are a positive gamble. Nevertheless, he frequently makes them on time having carefully manipulated the day's intake of wine and its subsequent requirement of naps. Other than that, I should add that he is excellent company and the recipient of much gossip which he redistributes to his friends with great generosity and gusto.
THURSDAY DECEMBER 13, 2007
From: Francis Connor, Sataheep, Thailand
My Dearest Simone,
'twas such a delight to speak to you on the electric telephone just now and I have already reserved a table for two at Gian's from noon plus 30 on Monday 17 December. You must share with me your experiences of India, in particular the survival course of arrival/departure from the madness of Delhi airport.
At the risk of leaving us with nothing to talk about at lunch, I can tell you that during the last ten years India has improved beyond recognition, with the exception of Calcutta which remains unchangingly awful and derelict. Bangalore looks positively first-worldly, with as many shopping malls as it used to have mosquitos. And Bombay has brought itself up to the level of a slightly dingy area of Paris, which in places it resembles a great deal - all those avenues lined with trees and five-storey nineteenth-century apartment blocks. Delhi airport, like Calcutta, has got left behind and is as bad as ever. We only passed through it in order to change from a domestic flight from Bombay onto an international flight to Bangkok, but that meant changing terminals, which virtually means changing airports since the domestic and international terminals are built on opposite sides of the airport and the only way to get from one to the other is by taking a bus or taxi half way into town then coming out again on a different road. We took a taxi - a derelict suspension-wrecked one in which the aircon was broken and the windows had to be open. It was the rush-hour and it took an hour and ten minutes. Now then... I suppose that leaves us with nothing to dicuss at lunch other than all the gossip that's happened in Pattaya during the three months I've been away. Hopefully you'll have it ready for me.
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 12, 2007
From: Pam O'Brien, ABC Radio, Brisbane, Australia.
Hello again Simon - we're putting your marvellous interview to air this morning (1100 EDST). Thanks so much again. If you miss it but want to listen later here's the link to your spot on the Conversation Hour website.
I thoroughly enjoyed doing the interview - it's not often anyone will give me a whole hour in which to chatter. And Richard Fidler was so well read up on everything, and such fun, that it made it a real pleasure. Perhaps the most amusing thing was hearing that Clive James had said he would exchange everything he's ever done for having written just one song for Dusty Springfield. If we'd been able to turn that into a serious negotiation I might have taken him up on it.
TUESDAY DECEMBER 11, 2007
From: Iiona Laurens, London, UK
I am currently studying events management and music and media management. I would just like to say I find your books riveting. I am now in my second year and writing a piece of coursework for my music industry management module. In your book I'm Coming To Take You To Lunch you state that the new record contract you got Wham! wasn't really too much better than their previous one. In George Michael's 'Bare' it was claimed to be considerably better.
You misundertood. I wrote.....
"Was it a good deal? Not at all. It was the same old stuff in a more attractive wrapping."
I meant: all contracts with major record companies are on a par - they're full of deceptive clauses designed simply to cheat artists of royalties and rights. In financial terms Wham!'s new contract was vastly better than their previous one. In moral terms, no different.
I continued, "In the music business you don't get out of an unfair record contract to get into a fair one; you get out of an unfair contract with bad financial terms to get into another unfair contract with slightly better financial terms. As you climb the pop hierachy you get better contractual conditions as you go, moving from a bottom rung where you are ripped off by every technique a record company knows, to a higher-rung deal where you're ripped off with greater subteley."
Which explains, for instance, why Radiohead, now out of their record contract, chose to offer their new album to the public for whatever they wanted to pay. My guess is - from their 'pay what you want' marketing ploy Radiohead made twice as much from this album as from any previous album sold through their record company at the normal price.
MONDAY DECEMBER 10, 2007
From Dick Strode, Boston, Mass, USA
Hey Simon - you said when you were in Australia you found some great wine and would tell me about it. But you never did.
Sorry Dick, I forgot about it. Yo and I spent a couple of days in the Hunter Valley - the first time I'd been there and I was surprised....
Having been to Nappa and Sonoma I expected the entire valley to be cultivated for wine. And of course, it's not. It's a vast area and mostly taken up with mining and horse breeding - anything but wine. When French settlers came to Sydney in the19th century this was the nearest place they could grow vines so it began to get its reputation. But in the last thirty years the commecialisation of the wine industry has led big companies to choose the very best places for viniculture - mostly in South Australia. We wanted to visit one of the smaller wine producers so we smply chose a sign that pointed to an attractively wooded hilltop and set off up a small track. The end result was Tranquil Vale Winery. A real stroke of luck!
An Englishman, Phil Griffiths, came here ten years ago with his family, bought bare land, planted vines and went off to college to learn how to make wine. Last year he got the prize for the best small winery in the Hunter Valley - not bad in just ten years. But that was for Shiraz, which is never completely to my taste. What was outstanding was his desert wine. Not a sauterne to be sure, but probably the best semillon desert wine I've tasted. Semillon's thin skin makes it perfect for botrytis (the fungus that removes water and leaves a higher percent of sugar). Phil has made a sweet wine from it that comes close to matching that magic quality of sauternes - honey and peaches in your mouth, but after you swallow hardly a hint of sweetness left. Stunning! I've still got a few bottles left but won't have by the time Christmas is over.
With Phil Griffiths at Tranquil Vale Winery
SUNDAY DECEMBER 9, 2007
From Andy Stathan, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Hey Simon - something wrong with your story, man!! Lynyrd Skynyrd had their plane crash in 1977 - the Fresh Today record was issued in 1970. What's more - all those people on the cover were world leaders in 1970, but not in 1977 which is when you say the cover was drawn. So what's the real story man? Are you blasted on booze as usual??
You're right, as were twenty or so other people who wrote in. And I was wrong, which is the result of having a well-used wine spittoon for a brain. Anyway, I've had a good think and here's the real story.
The first part of what I said - about the creation of the Fresh Today album sleeve - was correct, but the record was released on the 1st of January 1970. RCA turned down the artwork as too morbid. So we commisioned a rather nasty political cartoon which at the time seemed heavy with meaning.
Our expensive meat-market artwork (a thousand quid's worth, which in the 60s was like twenty thousand today) then sat in a cupboard for several years. But in 1977 I produced an album with a punk group I managed called London (Miles Tredinnick, vocals - Jon Moss, later of Culture Club, on drums). The album's title was Animal Games so I showed them the artwork of humans hung as meat in Smithfield market and they loved it. We duly took it along to MCA, to whom they were signed, and the story thereafter proceeded as I told it yesterday. Several of the Lynyrd Skynyrd band had died in a plane crash about three hours before we appeared in MCA's office, and we were shown the door. Again we had a cartoon drawn as a substitute cover. And it was the same cartoonist - Chris Townson - who'd been the drummer with John's Children (another group I once managed).
And here it is...
SATURDAY DECEMBER 8, 2007
From Pete, Woodstockade, Deridder, Louisiana, USA
Simon... I want to thank you for one of the greatest LP's ever released.. My 'Fresh Today' LP still gets played and I've turned my grandkids on to it as well.. Why was it never redone on CD or if it has where can I find a copy? My LP still sounds great, but when you pull out a LP eyebrows raise.. I would also love to to DL it on a myspace page, but really am in the dark on that... Anyway Fresh Today and Steppenwolf's Monster are my two favorite LP's of that nature and those songs are as meaningful today as they were 37 years ago... Your fan and friend...
Hi Pete, nice to get compliments for an album, even if it was made forty years ago. I often get correspondence about Fresh. They were a group Ray Singer and I recorded in the 60s, mostly using session musicians and sometimes session singers too. The group DID exist, but we found it hard to get any music out of them. The first album was Fresh Out of Borstal. We pretended they were borstal boys and photographed them in front of some iron bars at Alexander Palace. We thought that would be the end of the matter but America rather took to them and actor Sal Mineo sent out several thousand as his annual Christmas card. So we had to make a second album - Fresh Today - which you're so kindly raving about. (I have another Fresh fan corresponding with me who copied the album and sent it to me to listen to - first time in thirty years - and I thought it sounded awful. But please don't let that put you off.) For the cover of Fresh Today we had a top fashion photographer go to Smithfield meat market and snap a few rows of dead cows. Then he snapped each member of the group hanging upside down naked in his studio and stripped them into the picture. The end result was pretty amazing and we went along to present it to Roy Feaherstone, the boss at MCA Records. But unbeknown to us a few hours earlier there'd been a plane crash in which several members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, MCA's top group, had been killed. Roy greeted our artwork of a dead rock group hanging in a meat market with stunned silence. Which is why we quickly had a rather peculiar political cartoon drawn to replace it (see below - human feet sticking out of the dish about to be served - I have know idea what we were thinking about at the time.)
FRIDAY DECEMBER 7, 2007
From Gail Duke, London, UK
Hi Simon!
Did you really sleep with Marc Bolan (the most gorgeous man that ever walked the planet)? Or did you make it up for the publicity?
Of course I didn't make it up, you silly cow. Why would I do that? Anyway, I reckon it was Marc who got the better part of the bargain. I mean... look at the beautiful bloke he did it with!!
SNB, 1966 Marc, 1966
THURSDAY DECEMBER 6, 2007
From Hubert D. Marsh, Beverly Hills, California, USA
Mr Napier-Bell, I want to let you know that I've just finished your last book. I found it inspirational. Your achievements and your ability to motivate yourself towards aspirational goals is impressive. Also, your ability to take the faults in your character and integrate them into an overall lifeplan so they become positives instead of negatives is the very basis of my own teachings. Should you wish to know more about my philosophy of motivation and acheivement I would be delighted to correspond further with you.
Oh dear - you sound like one of those mad motivational nuts who roam around America lecturing people on how to realise their dreams. Apart from religion, nothing upsets me more than this endless obsession with motivation and achievement. Life isn’t for achieving, it’s for drifting enquiringly. Anything that interests you should be followed. By all means explore the South Pole, or the moon, your mother’s big toe nail, or the internal workings of a flea's bladder. But when you publish your findings, don't be to be too proud of what you've done because you've only been enjoying yourself. No more praiseworthy than getting drunk or having a wank.
So don’t talk about my achievements - that's just new-age American trash. I've suffered motivational talks since I was ten. My teachers and parents nagged me endlessly about the necessity of finding a target towards which I should direct my life.
"What are you going to be when you grow up?" they asked endlessly.
"Me, I hope!" was the best reply I could find. And that's all I've ever bothered with.
(As for my faults - I have none.)
WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 5, 2007
From Leo Nine, Bangkok, Thailand
Dear Simon,
good to have you back!
It was a skillful effort to include absolutely nothing quotable for Thomas de F's band but, if I were he, I'd probably go with:
"just the right bite for the style of the band which makes... that definitive hit".
It's strenuous, I know, but there have been far more dubious quotes strangled out of bad or non-committal reviews. I remember Timothy West talking about a short-lived West End 'hit' that, after opening, could find nothing better for the billboards than "This Three Act Play..."
And then - in the live world - there is that awkward moment after the performance when one has to go backstage to 'congratulate' a colleague who has performed poorly.
A short hug followed by earnest eyes and: "Really, there were moments when it, it, it really could have been anybody playing"... gets one out of the trap. The encuddled can never quite know (nor ask) whether you were suggesting that their performance was at various points an Heifetzian masterpiece of perfection, or more resembled an emergency recorder riff busked in some dark underpass by a desperate and destitute transient.
Hey ho!
Hope to see you soon.
Leo - lovely to hear from you - and yes, lovely to be back from my travels for at least four weeks.
Poor Thomas de Freitas, his band really isn't bad at all, and the lead singer is excellent. Moreover, he writes most personable emails in one of which he admitted to being a lapsed Catholic. To be honest, I thought offering him "quite nice" as a quote was a mite stingy. Had he told me he'd rebelled fully against Catholicism (and all other religions too) I might have upgraded it all the way to 'nice'.
It's time we had dinner. Will you might be coming to Pattaya soon? If not, perhaps we could do lunch next week. I have to go to the embassy to get a new passport, my old one now being stuffed full of visas. Any chance?
TUESDAY DECEMBER 4, 2007
From Andy Michaeljohn, London, UK
hi simon... ive not heard you sound off on religion for quite a while now... not that I particularly want you to but ive just come across a band i really want to manage... theyre pure dynamite... totally secular in their lyrics but the singer is a born again christian... it worries me... what dyou think... worth investing time and effort... or a dangerous proposition?????
Not just dangerous - a betrayal of your own good brain even to associate with them. If you want to help them, get the lead singer into psychiatric help and run a mile. If he's managed to decieve himself about the nature of his own existence he's going to have deceipt and falsehood pre-programmed into his brain. Impossible to manage - impossible to deal with.
Can't you find yourself a decent group of drug-fucked bi-sexual atheists? If not, I don't rate your chances as a manager.
MONDAY DECEMBER 3, 2007
From Thomas de Freitas, London, UK
Hi Simon,
I hope this email finds you well. The reason I'm writing is that our new manager has been making our press pack and is looking for quotes to use. Seeing as the best thing we have at the moment is "What do you mean you're in a band?!?" (my father, 2006) we could do with a bit of help. Even if it were for the most part pejorative, anyone in the music biz who wasn't impressed with a quote from you probably wouldn't be worth knowing.
Sorry if this is really annoying, not to mention presumptuous, but I had to ask. I just had to.
Thank you for your time.
A single adulatory soundbite is going to be tricky. The band is very listenable to, in fact listening to your myspace songs was like hearing an album I once loved but had forgotten about. The lead voice has just the right bite for the style of the band which makes for a pleasantly homogenous sound. But what I don't hear is that definitive hit (the reason, presumably, that this favourite old album of mine would have sold in the first place). If you can find it, and then find half a million people with tastes as retro as mine, I guess you'll have a future. (Though I have to admit, just as your myspace tracks ran out my i-tunes file jumped unexpectedly to life with Pony by Genuwine - burpy, disgusting and very today - reminding me that I'm not a retro person at all.)
Would "quite nice" be of any use to you?
SUNDAY DECEMBER 2, 2007
From Sam Jor, Music Week, Hong Kong
Dear Simon,
greetings from Sam Jor in Hong Kong.
Hope this email finds you well. It's been a while since we last communicated.
David Sylvian was here last month for a small concert , promoted by one of our ex-staffs. Good reviews. Already 20 + years since you came with Japan to
do their final tour. Time really flies.
A good friend of mine whose working for Radio Hong Kong, and is also a member of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad(BOCOG), asking me to see if I can check to get one top international artiste
(famous and known to China) to sing the English version of the song. Recording can be done in his/her own country. You are the first person I think of whom
might help to recommend or tie up something for this since you are the person who brought Wham to China, and our country has changed so much since those days.
Well Sam, I guess we're not going to be looking at Ozzy Osbourne or the Scissor Sisters! Nor Mika, or Girls Aloud. In fact, just about anyone current is going to say 'NO' in big letters. With credibility playing such a large part in western pop, your search seems doomed to failure before it begins. Until, perhaps, you reach the has-been crowd - an artist with international hits known in China but long since confined to oblivion by the rest of the world - Boney M, for instance, or Barbara Streisland. But even those people are going to want the benefits pretty clearly spelt out, which in both cases would probably be a large dollop of cash in hand. By the way, who wrote this Olympics song? And who's doing the English lyrics? I have a feeling it will be a stiff, nationalistic type of thing better suited to an operatic singer than a pop star. Credibility matters less in the classical field, and benefits in kind might be easier to come up with - either from the Olympic committee in Beijing, or from the artist's own government (by way of a bit of diplomatic give-and-take with the Chinese government) or again, in plain hard cash on the table. But although your best bet looks to be the operatic set, you never know - in exchange for some massive donation to his AIDS charity, perhaps Elton would do it, managing to retain credibility simply because we'd all know he was doing it tongue-in-cheek, enjoying the chance to get amongst the athletes. I'm sorry I can't be more specifically helpful, it sounds a hard one and I'll be interested to see who ends up doing it. Boy George's career needs a bit of a boost, as does Pete Docherty's, and Gary Glitter is currently living in the region. But I suspect you'll end up with someone incredibly dreary. Paul McCartney, perhaps.
SATURDAY DECEMBER 1, 2007
From Archie Soames, London, UK
Hi Simon. Reaing the papers over the last few months, several things I've seen have led me to think that perhaps Thailand isn't the safe, smiling, sunny place we're all led to believe it is. I mean... stories about shootings and knifings and violence. So what's you're take on it Simon? Is it still the same wonderful place for a holiday, or has it changed?
Nothing's changed here - nothing ever seems to. Undeneath the smiles there's plenty of violence, but if you're just a tourist and behave sensibly you'll never see it. I've been here on and off since the early 70s and am yet to encounter a knife or a gun. In fact, the last time I was threatened by a knife was several years ago in Amsterdam. I was walking along by a peaceful canal in a good neighbourhood round midnight when it was shoved at my throat. I did what one's meant to do and passed over everything of value and in return had a vein on my hand cut so that the blood spurting out would deter me from chasing after them. As for guns, I've only ever been threatened by one once. It was in the late 50s when I was 18, working in a dockside tavern in Montreal as a musician. We played twenty minutes on/twenty minutes off and had strict instructions that if any shooting started we should keep playing. I'd just finished one of my twenty minutes off and stood up to go back to the bandstand when I was confronted by a man who put a gun to my forehead. The brain reacts to these things in milliseconds - during those milliseconds the sensible part of my brain told me to keep cool. But another part of my brain overuled it. The silly part decided a great big kick into the man's groin would be the right thing to do, and before the sensible part of my brain could get the debate properly started the silly part slammed my right leg into the air and sent it flying towards his crotch. Only it didn't. The leg completely missed and came up into thin air to the right of the man sending me crashing over backwards onto the floor. The gunman seemed quite amused. He burst out laughing and wandered off to kill someone else instead.
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