TUESDAY NOVEMBER 20, 2007
From Dan Strickland, New York, NY, USA
Hey Simon – strange, that Elvis version of ‘You Don’t Have To’ suddenly jumping into the UK charts like that. I remember when it first came out in 1970. You’d just arrived in New York from Morocco where you’d been recording some sort of ethnic album with a rock backing track. You wandered into my office and saw a copy of the Elvis record on my desk and got excited – asked when it was coming out. And I told you, it’s already out, it’s in the top ten. Then Kit Lambert called you and insisted you had to treat everyone to a celebration dinner, and insisted it was Sardis. Do you remember?
Dead right I remember. Kit turned up with a couple of dodgy rent boys, ordered himself a double portion of caviar then fell asleep and stuck his elbow in it – three hundred dollars worth of Beluga embedded in the sleeve of his tweed jacket. Then he woke up again, insisted it was perfectly edible and started sucking it out. Anyway, how are you? Must be twenty years since we last spoke. Oh – and talking about that Moroccan album – I remember very clearly how RCA (who’d paid for it), refused to release it, said no-one would be interested in an album about Morocco. Then just a few weeks later Crosby Still & Nash had a smash with Marakesh Express.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 19, 2007
From John Dang, Bangkok, Thailand
Lovely story on your website today! Made me feel all sentimental!
Hi John! Glad you liked my Indonesian story. Bit of a coincidence hearing that track
the minute I arrived. I haven't heard it again so I guess it was just the radio station's daily
'pop relic' slot.
Another relic, Elvis Presley, went into the UK pop chart this week with his ancient version of You Don't Have To Say You Love Me. It sounds very out of place, but who cares. It's good for royalties.
So I guess this is 'relic week'. And I'm wallowing in it while the wallowing's good.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 18, 2007
From Andy Shirland, London, UK
Hi Simon. I see from your website that you're currently in Jakarta.... I remember many many years ago you arrived back in London from there... and set about making a record with an Indonesian singer you'd met.... As far as I remember nothing ever came of it.... hope you have better luck this time....
Hi Andy. That's right - in 1971. She was called Teti Kadi. At that time she was the biggest pop star in Indonesia. I'd stopped over in Jakarta for 24 hours on the way from Sydney to London. I'd flown over the country so many times I thought it was time I took a quick look. I was sitting at an outside cafe under a huge umbrella sheltering from a thunderous downpour when a young guy came running through the rain and joined me. I'd been enjoying my rainy solitude and didn't want to talk, but he kept pushing me to make conversation, 'Did I come from England - America - Germany? Was I an engineer - pilot - doctor? Evenutally I told him I was a pop manager, "My niece is the top pop singer in Indonesia," he said. "Really," I asked sarcastically, "so what's your brother, the ambassador to America?" "One of them," he replied, "and another's the Amabassador to Sweden." "And I suppose your father's the President?" I suggested. "No - the mayor of the capital city".
The long and the short of it was we fell for each other and my 24-hour stay turned into nearly a year. He had an uncle who was a songwriter and record producer, another who ran the army, and so on. On Sundays we'd drive to his parents' in Bogor where it was hilly and cool. Family lunch could be as many as a hundred people. I stayed until my money ran out. Then I flew back to London and made a hugely expensive record with his niece. It was an English version of an Indonesian song I'd fallen for and I was so convinced it would be a hit I used a sixty piece orchestra. I was wrong. What sounded like a worldwide smash sitting amongst night-scented flowers on a warm tropical evening didn't have the bite to cut through a bustling smog-filled European city. So my Indonesian venture came to a close. But a couple of nights ago, sitting in a taxi in a Jakarta traffic jam, the song came on the radio. Quite nostalgic, to say the least.
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 17, 2007
From Bao Vanh, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
hi si - if you come ho chi minh next week dont forget look me up ... still here still do same thing but now i am manager... what you come for??? same last time??? which you never tell me anyway...
Hi Bao, sure I'll look you up, glad to hear you've been promoted. I'm coming with a bunch of people from a company called Sutasi which is searching Asia for singing stars to promote in the West - we're searching in every country from India to Japan. We're currently in Indonesia, go to the Phillipines next and come to Vietnam after that. If you've got friends who can sing (I mean, brilliantly!) tell them to come to the auditions. They can check out where to come on www.myspace.com/sutasi. I'm surprised I didn't tell you what I was doing last time I was there. I was trying to set up a charity event - a multinatonal rock concert with major groups from all over the world to raise money for Vietnamese children still suffering two generations on from the effects of the Americans spraying herbicides to clear the jungles. The concert was timed to coincide with the end of the US trade embargo on your country. After I met you in Ho Chi Minh City I went to Hanoi to visit your Minister of Culture at the time - Madam Lim - a formidable woman who wore a monocle. She'd been a fighter pilot during the Vietnam war and had shot down more American planes than any other Vietnamese pilot. She also shot down the idea for the show.
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 16, 2007
From Sonja Fransisca, The Jakarta Post ‘Weekender’, Jakarta, Indonesia
Hi Simon, good to hear that somebody is looking for artists from Indonesia. We have plenty of great ones, and it's about time they get noticed. ‘Float’ - I can't really categorize them as it's a mix of everything; basically they just put out what they want to put. ‘Santamonica’ - mixture of pop fused with jazz and a bit of electronic music. ‘Tika’, a female singer, I like her distinct voice and unique way of singing. ‘The Adams’ - a bit like Beach Boys. And ‘Ape on the Roof’ (electronics).
Hi Sonja. Thanks for that. We just had a good audition in Kuala Lumpur and struck gold with one act. In Jakarta we expect double-gold. We’ll chase up on all these acts. Any group called Ape On The Roof must have something going for them.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 15, 2007
From Julian Bailey, London, UK
Hi Simon. A few weeks ago you listed all the artists you could remember managing, which included Sinitta and Jeff Beck, both, you mentioned, for a short time. Then a few days later you told the story of your short-lived time with Sinitta. What was the story with Jeff Beck?
When the Yardbirds finally became unmanageable, I gave them to Peter Grant to lookafter, and in due course he morphed them into Led Zeppelin. Peter worked at the time with Mickie Most, so Mickie took over record production. Jeff Beck had walked out of the group after a dispute over the recording of his single, Beck's Bolero (which I produced, but which later was released with Mickie Most credited as producer). I always liked Jeff and got on with him well, and still do, but my management of him was disastrous. He wanted to form a supergroup. Rod Stewart would be on vocals, Viv Prince of the Pretty Things on drums and Ron Wood (later of the Rolling Stones), on second guitar. I booked them a first gig at the Finsbury Park Empire supporting the Small Faces but it ended in disaster. The group had only rehearsed three times. The first time was with Kim Gardner on bass. That was done accoustically at Jeff's tiny flat in Suttton. The second time was at a rehearsal studio at Goodge Street but by then the bass player had been changed to Jet Harris (ex Shadows). The third rehearsal was at 19, a tacky rehearsal studio in Denmark Street. By then Viv Prince decided he didn't want to leave the Pretty Things after all so Ray Cook came in on drums. Jet Harris had also walked out so Ronnie Wood changed to playing bass. From these three shambolic rehearsals the group went straight to the Finsbury Park Empire, a theatre that held nearly four thousand. And the result was even more shambolic. I wrote about it in Black Vinyl White Powder.....
"The gig was a disaster. Rod Stewart walked onstage with his flies undone, the power failed after one number and the curtain came down and bashed Ronnie Wood on the head, knocking him off balance. Later, Rod said the Small Faces had pulled the plug because they thought Jeff Beck might steal the show."
Whatever was behind the debacle my inability to find an immediate solution to it left me without a group. A month later, Jeff's single with Mickie Most, 'Hi Ho Silver Lining' went into the charts. But I was no longer managing him.
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 14, 2007
From Amyra Michaelides, Bangkok, Thailand
Hello Simon - I just arrived in Bangkok for a week and was hoping to meet up with you. Then I read your website and found you were away. Pity! Long time no see, and I have so much to tell you. When are you next going to be in Hong Kong? I'd love to catch up.
Amyra - if you're in Bangkok, then it's most definitely not a pity I'm not there, it's a monstrous stroke of good fortune. Why are you so totally insensitive to plain talking? I've told you a hundred times already I can't stand you yet you simply keep on trying to push your way into my company. Here - read it again. And again. And listen to it one more time....
You are the most intrusive, interfering, overbearing, unappealing, undesirable, fag-haggy woman in the world. With absolutely NO redeeming features.
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 13, 2007
From Andrew 'Toggsy' Videto, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia
Hey there Simon. Hope all's well. I've just stumbled onto your website and rock on man! Some great stories and I love what you've written. I make an online show about people around the world chasing and living dreams. I'd love to film something with you the next time I'm in the UK?
Hi Toggsy. You stumbled a few days too late - last week I was in Australia. What's more, “next time you’re in the UK” won’t help you either - I live in Thailand. As for chasing dreams, that doesn't sound like me at all. However, if we both happen to be in the same place at the same time and you want to do something with me for
your
youtube web show, I'd be delighted. Your pornstar interview with the
absurdly-serious-about-her-job Jessica Drake was hilarious, especially her laying her panties on the chair to sit on, then scratching her arse when she got up off them at the end.
MONDAY NOVEMBER 12, 2007
From Georgie Arendt, Sydney, Australia
Hi Simon. I go to Asia often too - mostly Thailand and Malaysia. I often hear great local artists - like Sek Loso or Bird McIntyre in Thailand, or Ning in Malaysia. Why don't you go straight for one of those instead of looking for new talent? And which of the local artists who are big do you think combines an Asian sound with the ability to break worlwide?
Artists who are already big stars in their own countries aren't too keen on going to the US in order to become nobodies. Why start again at the bottom when you're already a superstar at home? Their record companies too don't care much for breaking them overseas because it takes them away from their core market where the companies can earn 2 to 3 dollars per record - the difference between manufacturing costs and wholesale, whereas overseas they'll simply make a few cents in royalties. For that reason, we're looking for new artists. But regarding who sounds Asian yet could break worldwide, all the artists you mentioned could. Currently we're in Kuala Lumpur where there's a pop/rock/hiphop act called Pop Shuvit. Take a look - it blends all those musical styles. It's poppy, hiphoppy, rocky and distinctively Malaysian in lifestyle, and there are acts like this all across Asia. And as everyone knows, it's only a matter of time before the the world's passion with the American way of life fades and people start looking elsewhere.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 11, 2007
From Art Sanderson, New York, NY, USA
Hey Simon - this artist search you told us about, looking for singers in Asia, I just came back from six months all over South East Asia, and all the best singers I heard were singing totally Western type music, except for the words being in their own language. My thought is, if you record them in English for the American market, there'll be nothing left about them that is Asian.
You're right - that's one of the problems - how to encourage them to go back to their roots and find something more Asian to put into their music. Last night in Bangkok we saw four extraorinarily good singers, as good as any singers currently having success anywhere in the world, but all of them had thrown away their cultural backgrounds in favour of sounding international, which pretty much meant American. Except one. A girl who sang with a fat rocky voice. She too had tried to get rid of her Asian roots but hadn't quite managed it - there was still something in her voice that was uniquely Thai although she was singing perfectly in English. And that's what we're looking for. We've already found an Indian artist of the same sort and in the next six months we're looking in every other Asian country - from Pakistan to Japan. My bet is we'll find several of the same thing - Westernised in their approach but with something of their own culture still coming through (even though they may have tried hard to get rid of it.) Wait twelve months and you'll see what I mean.
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10, 2007
From Maria Larkins, San Bernadino, California, USA
Dear Mr. Napier-Bell, your posts over the last two days have shown you becoming increasingly cantankerous. The likely cause is poor diet, causing enzymic imbalance, and an absence of spiritual equilibrium. These deficiencies can badly affect both your physical and metaphysical health. We have over 7000 natural enzymes in our body and now and then throughout life these need to be put back into nature's original balance, rather like re-installing a computer's software and putting everything back to the original factory settings. Once reset, the body and mind can recapture the original verve of youth. Developing the techniques used to bring about this physical and metaphysical regeneration has been my lifetime's work. Using them, you can repair the damage done to your body by years of deviation from balanced living. You will need to subject yourself to an enzymically balanced diet, a light exercise regime and a daily program of mental renewal. After three months you will feel like a new person, totally at one with the world around you. After six, you will be uplifted to a new cerebral universe. In the accompanying attachment you will find testimonial letters endorsing my techniques and my list of charges. If you have family or friends you should consider my group discount programme.
Dear Maria, my own lifetime achievement has been to bring myself to the point of cantankerous perfection you recently noticed. Were I to inadvisedly follow your techniques for metaphysical repair I fear I might be rendered in foul good mood, smiling
all over the place and telling people to 'have a good day'. Anyway, your techinques sound tedious and lengthy. To be at one with the world requires nothing more than a large scotch and some good wine over dinner - to enter a cerebral universe, try a postprandial tumbler of calvados - pure good health, all 7000 enzymes contained in every glass!
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 9, 2007
From Jamie McKay, London, UK
Hi Simon – did you see the piece about you in this week's Popbitch....?
“Music industry legend Simon Napier-Bell was approached by the BBC with a view to making a programme about his life. Napier-Bell said ‘of course’, but pointed out that they'd have a hard job as he'd fallen out with every act he managed. So if they tried to interview members of Wham, Japan, Ultravox, etc they'd probably say nothing except that he was a cock.”
Well of course! What manager leaves his act on good terms? You turn then into stars then they decide they don’t need you any more. So what do you say? Thank-you very much? Of course not! You call them what they deserve to be called - then when the BBC want them to say nice things about you, they won’t. Which is just how it should be. Who the hell wants eulogies?
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2007
From Terry Shannon, Newcastle, UK
Hi Simon! Last week I was driving down to London for a meeting and I passed a 1965 Ford Thunderbird convertible - the same monster American car you once had, except that when you had yours it was new and totally amazing. It was extraordinary to come up to London from university at weekends and enter into your very glamorous world (you were managing the Yardbirds at the time). Coming across your website the other day I discovered your life is glamorous as ever, while mine is deadly dull. I'm 59, divorced, and a grandfather, (yes, I got married in the end). And I'm about to retire (consultant in 'resource rationalisation').
I remember that car too - electric blue with a trunk that opened up at the touch of a button to gobble away the white hood anytime the sun came out. I recall one summer afternoon when you and I went out of town somewhere for lunch and were driving back with the hood down. Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham came on the radio and I freaked out, hand-dancing on the steering wheel till I drove the car into a ditch. You moaned like a nagging wife, saying I was trying to kill you.
So you're still alive, are you? But not so pretty anymore, I should think. And strange you should have got married. Anyway, you're right about me still enjoying life. Newcastle must be deadly. But don't worry, it won't be for long. Now you've retired it should be a clear run to the grave.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2007
From Sister Siobhan, Dublin, Ireland
My dear Mr Simon Napier-Bell, although the emails you post on your website continue to show you off as a man of eclectic interests (in the last few days for instance exchanging words with Fatf*** the unholily perverted Sydney policeman, then playing at political pundit for Australia's forthcoming election), Sister Dee and I have yet to receive the politeness of a reply to any of the last few emails we have sent you. While we worry that your brain is becoming addled by the amount of calvados you confess to drinking, we can assure you that a donation of rock memorabilia to our annual auction would bring you absolution for quite some time.
Sisters Siobhan and Dee, you're such a pain and you write so often, and I've already told you I have no rock memorablia. And about this word 'confess'! Confession plays no part in my life, I'm an open book - just ask and I tell. However, since you call yourselves 'sisters', I presume dealing with sin is of more importance to you than it is to me. In which case, next time one of you finds yourself in one of those little booths talking your way through your misdeeds, perhaps you could get a quote on how many Hail Marys you would need to say to absolve you from the sin of cluttering up my inbox with your weekly Godtrash.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2007
From Sarah Jamieson, Portland, Oregon, USA
Hey Simon - seeing you are in Australia, I was just wondering how you find Australians compared with Americans. I mean - I often see you complaining about Americans yet to me Australians and Americans seem to have many of the same characeristics. Is that what you find too? Do the things that annoy you with Americans annoy you with Australians too/
Absolutely not! And on Sunday evening, sitting with a couple of English friends over dinner at Bondi beach, this subject came up. Everyone agreed about the insensitivity of Americans abroad. Mostly, they don’t seem to have the ability to adjust their behaviour to fit with the country they’re visiting. Everywhere they go they get people’s backs up, yet Australians, who come from a country in many ways similar (size, prosperity, populated entirely by immigrants, fierce sense of its own being), rarely behave that way. So what’s the big difference?
My theory is it’s because to be an American you have to swear allegiance to the constitution. Any immigrant who wants to become an American has to do it. Kids at school have to do it every day. Having sworn allegiance you become a ‘believer’. It turns ‘being American’ into a religion. Therefore they travel the world as evangelists. Americans have no hesitation in believing THEY are right and everyone else is an infidel. It’s this too, I’m sure, that makes them so suspicious of fellow countrymen being over familiar with foreign cultures. I was in Paris once when Tony Blair was being interviewed on TV, in French. He spoke it perfectly, and it felt good to have a Prime Minister who could do that. Yet when John Kerry was running for U.S. President he was treated with disdain because he spoke French. To many Americans, for their President to have spoken with Jacques Chirac in French would have been, at the best, groveling; at the worst, something approaching treachery. Worse than that, to the average U.S. voter George W. Bush’s inability to speak English properly was seen as a plus – a sign of being a truly ordinary American.
When I first visited Australia forty years ago that attitude might have been prevalent here too. Nowadays, though, Australia is a country at ease with itself. It has enough confidence in its own success, and its own innate character, not to worry about such stupidity. There’s about to be an election in which John Howard is likely to be ditched in favour of Kevin Rudd, an ex-Ambassador to China. One of the key factors in his popularity is that he speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. Australians feel the need to move closer to their nearest and biggest neighbour. What better way than by having a Prime Minister who can pop across to China and speak to Hu Jintao in his own language? For Australia it’s a real coming of age.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2007
From Charlie Baird, London, UK
Hi Simon – apart from good eating and simply being able to say you’ve been there, is there anything really worth doing in Australia?
Yes – you can be photographed with a koala.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2007
From Eric Merced, Manila, Phillipines
Simon – I have read you are involved with a company sorting Asian singing talent for the western market. My voice is soulful but also soars like opera. My friends call me Whitney Pavarotti. When you come to Manila, please can we meet me personally? You will like me, I promise. I am the talent you are looking for.
It’s amazing how often people write asking something like this. If you can stand on stage and grab an audience of thousands, you’re what we’re looking for. If you can't, then playing the hooker won't help. Whitney Pavarotti sounds like someone worth hearing. So zip up your flies and sell your voice not your crotch.
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 3, 2007
From Gerry Lendl, London, UK
Hi Simon. Fun to hear all the silly things you're telling us about Sydney but don't forget what a lot of us like to hear about when you're travelling is the food. And Sydney is so known for it. So... What have you been eating?
First night Yo and I ate at the new Doyle's on Circular Quay. Peter Doyle gave us the top table, right across from the floodlit opera house, and greeted us with a bottle of champagne. There really isn't any point going anywhere else in the world but Doyles if you want to eat the best seafood. We each had a dozen oysters followed by stunningly fresh and simply prepared fish. I've never had better anywhere else, nor am I likely too. Even so, restaurants are about more than just food and for all the great location and beautiful view Doyle's is ostentatiously unluxurious - table clothes, yes, but unstylish kitchen chairs to sit on. In search of something different we ate next night at Bentleys which has been voted as having the best newcomer chef in Australia, but since I wasn't in on the voting I don't feel duty bound to agree. Also average was Lucio's, an Italian joint we ate at the next night, though it had also been recommended with equal enthusiasm and had some great art on the walls. Yesterday we buzzed off to the the Hunter Valley and stayed at the Old George & Dragon in East Maitland where the food - and wine, and service, and accomodation - were perfect. If you wonder just how good, look at the smile of content on my face in the photo below (taken after dinner with Jenny Morphy who runs the place with her husband Ian). And what did I eat? Blue Swimmer Crab Mornay, Scallops with Pesto Sauce, Rabbit in a Mustard Gravy, slightly gamey Kangaroo with what I would describe as a Teriyaki-ish sauce and a perfectly made sticky toffee pudding. All this with a Cabernet from Coonawarra and a calvados to finnish. And voilà. Here comes the contented smile....
Me and Jenny Morphy of the Old George & Dragon, East Maitland
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 2, 2007
From Fatfuck, Sydney, Australia
Hi Simon. Fatfuck sees you on TV with Kerri-Anne. Fatfuck likes what he sees. Fatfuck is horny? Fatfuck is here if you need him. Fatfuck is a gay police officer.
This is Fatfuck.
Dear Mr F, it’s good to know that Sydney is so welcoming and members of its police force so concerned to entertain me while I’m here. Unfortunately my preference is for the thinner type - less frenetic, more cautiously named, a mite younger, with better dress sense. But should I come across anyone with a penchant for baloon-bellied bespectacled policemen I’ll pass on your name.
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 1, 2007
From Anne Ellen Palmer, Sydney, Australia
Hi Simon! Heard you on today's A.M. Breakfast Show and found you very interesting. Also visited your web-site and emphasised so much with you re the "Swinging 60's", i.e. Le Scotch, and remember crawling out of an E-type Jaguar because the pavements were so high and the car so low and the legs so long!! Also being at a place called the Cafe des Artistes in 1963 and being taken to a party in Edith Grove. It turned out that the party was to celebrate the first recording that day of the Rolling Stones first record. I too met a skinny young man (who now lives in Bogota, Colombia) called Andrew Oldham and he told me that this band would be the greatest rock'n’roll band the world has ever seen. Well it certainly is the oldest and I am still their No. 1 fan. Ah those were the days!!
Hi Anne Ellen. I hope your legs haven't shrunk and are as long as ever, though these days no longer needed for crawling out of E-types.
At the time of the Rolling Stones first record I saw them do a show at the Finsbury Park Empire. They were way down the bill with a couple of groups above them, both of the teen-scream type (I think Herman’s Hermits was one of them). The Stones, totally unkown, started their set in stony silence. But after a few seconds, from the back of the hall came the sound of a single teenage girl screaming manically. It was infectious. Other girls started joining in and after a while it turned to hysteria. It was then that I saw the Stones' manager, Andrew Oldham, climbing out from under the seat where the first scream had been heard.
These days his girly screams have been exchanged for an attractively deep and resonant voice that he uses to good effect on Sirius Radio (which you can get on the net.)
TUESDAY OCTOBER 30, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
hi simon. thanks for pointing my ears in the direction of the modern jazz quartet.
i been playing this one a lot… although something terrible sad about a last concert when you can hear the togetherness that surely could only come through years of being around each other. all things must pass, i guess.
i was at tom robinson's house on saturday night. he throws a great party on the night the clock changes back. they rig up a bar in the back room,light a fire in the garden and we all take turns in singing songs. the conversations are a trip too... one moment you're talking to a lady who worked at A&M records the day the sex pistols went round there and caused all that chaos... the next moment you're talking to an ex gay copper... and then a newsreader who's gay but has two daughters... tom and sue's own fluidity reflected in their friends and household... the gifts of a lifetime in music
Hi Gregory. Thanks for this new MJQ track – it’s a real treat. I didn’t know you knew Tom, he’s an old friend of mine too, and his parties are always amazing. Due to living in Thailand the last one I went too was ages ago but it sounds pretty much like the one you went to last week, with some of the same people too. Actually, it was Tom who got me started on this website, some ten years ago. He designed my original website, very classy, but not much visited as I never updated it. Finally I realised I had to learn to do it for myself, which I did by learning from the design code he’d originally done for me. Tom’s own website is still a masterful mix of good design and much information. I often look at it and wish I could make the effort to make mine as comrehensive as his is.
MONDAY OCTOBER 29, 2007
From David Sharpe, Portsmouth, UK
hi simon. i've been working on a book about people with hyphenated names and how they came into being. can you tell me about yours.
That sounds like a pretty dull book. To make it even duller you could include the following. (And I hope you discover capital letters before you get the book published.)
My great-great-great grandfather, Charles Bell, fell in love with the eldest daughter of the von Tempski family (top chaps in Poland).
Papa von Tempski gave his approval for the marriage on the understanding that from then on every eldest son of the Bells would have a Polish name immediately before their surname. They chose to alternate Stanislaus and Napier (anglicised from the Polish name Napierski). My great-great grandfather became John Stanislaus Bell - my great grandfather, James Napier Bell - my grandfather, Charles Stanislaus Bell - my father, John Napier Bell, etc. My father got bored with the procedure. He decided to stick with Napier and hyphenate it.
More interesting than any of that is the life of the most famous von Tempski - Gustavus. He went off to New Zealand in the 19th Century where the British gave him citizenship so he could fight with them against the Maoris. He did for a while, then refused to serve under a junior officer and was arrested. He was pardoned, only to lead a suicidal attack against the Maoris during which he got himself shot in the head. Most of the mad blood in us Napier-Bells comes from the von Tempskis.
The death of Gustavus von Tempsky
SUNDAY OCTOBER 28, 2007
From Marc Spitz, New York, NY, USA
hi simon. i debated indicating that you could freely dismiss certain questions since there was such a surplus but either i forgot or i selfishly or subconsciously hoped you'd answer them all. what i learned from black vinyl is more than enough to help me along, so those separate answers were just extra cool. i don't even mind that you posted me at my most naive on yr site. oh, and i did locate your bowie/ralph horton anecdote. i'm going to purchase your third book and read it as soon as i'm out of the woods a bit on this 60s chapter. i'll let you know how the book progresses down the road.
Hi Marc! The morning I answered your long list of questions I was in a foul mood and it probably showed in the answers, particularly to questions which seemed to have no relevance to me, but that was 'cos I forgot you were writing a book on David Bowie, which would have explained them. As for showing you up on the website, well... it was a good way to learn, wasn't it? Bowie's early 70s personna - his wearing a dress on stage, and make-up, and professing to be gay, influenced the times profoundly. It led even the straightest of people - like Sweet and Slade and Mott the Hoople and Gary Glitter - to throw caution to the wind and dress themselves as (previously) only the outest of urban gays would have dared. And I'm sure David being so forthright about his gay or bisexual tendencies helped other young people come out more easily, just as Marc Bolan and Elton John helped with their own easygoingness about the same thing. I'm glad you found the story about Ralph Horton offering me a quickie with David Bowie in exchange for help with management. It was typical of the times. And typical too of what everyone knew of David at the time - i.e. he was hugely promiscuous and his promiscuity went in all directions. It's sad that nowadays he's so keen to deny that he was even a little bit gay. In the 60s and early 70s he was totally bisexual (as a huge number of people found out to their great pleasure, so he has nothing to be ashamed of). It's such a pity that, just because he lives in Amererca which is still too homophobic to accept gay rock artists, David feels he has to deny his past. It's silly - like pretending you never had an unbroken voice, or were never a virgin. I see no reason why, even if he's totally straight these days, David shouldn't be able to acknowledge that he went through a gay or bisexual period. Funnily enough, a couple of years go I bumped into Ralph Horton, the first time I'd seen him since that first time in the 60s. We chatted about the offer I'd turned down, and he tried to make me regret it by saying that Bowie had the most perfect erect penis he'd ever encountered. I'm not sure what consitutes a perfect penis - I would have thought each man to his own - but it did occur to me that the way Bowie now energetically denies his past makes him more of a perfect prick.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 27, 2007
From Andrew Jenkins, Executive V.P. International, Universal Music, London, UK
Dear Simon,
Wonderful to hear from you and thank you for thinking of me on my birthday. I suppose reaching my current position is progress, but like all of it these days it seems to come only with the loss of something else. I miss the freedom of other times, deals done and bottles drunk, and music markets that grew and grew in the same way as the friendships we made along the way.
I guess this just sounds like I’m getting old, but the spirit is still young and still rebels against the constant onslaught of average. Yes, I will still retire to Australia. You’re life sounds idyllic, and I would love to see you whenever we are in the same town.
Hi Andrew – wonderful things computers – I never used to remember anyone’s birthday but now I’m warned with flashing lights when I turn on each morning. Reaching the top in the corporate world must put you in quite a straitjacket, but I’m sure there are still plenty of bottles to be drunk, and since you’re in publishing rather than records there’s still a real future. Must be far more depressing for people in the record division. As for my life being idyllic, well… some days it is, others boring, and others shit - just like anyone else’s. Funny you should mention Australia, I’m off there next week, not to retire though, just to do some book promo and have a few dinners with old friends. Retirement isn’t really on the cards as far as I’m concerned - I’m just no good at doing nothing - at any one time I always seem to have a dozen things on the go, though these days they seem to come to fruition less often. Re managing to find ourselves in the same town at the same time - between now and the end of the year I’m pretty sure I won’t be in London but I can offer you Bangkok, Sydney, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore. Any of those any good?
FRIDAY OCTOBER 26, 2007
From Jamie Delaney, Bridlington, Yorkshire, UK
Hi Simon!
Did you see??? Boris Johnson (in the Daily Telegraph) wrote saying the same thing you’ve been saying for ages – that fighting global warming by cutting everyone’s carbon emissions by half is a waste of time – just cut the number of people by half instead. Do you think he’s been reading your website?
I doubt it. It doesn’t take much of a brain to work it out. Trouble is, as Boris's piece points out, no politician dares to say it – they think it’s like proposing a holocaust. Which is crap. A few billion people not yet born need to be got rid of by not letting them be born in the first place - there's nothing holocaustful about that now, is there?? What’s required is either a ‘gay gene’ bomb, or a ‘render you infertile’ bomb’. Then some busybody country like the USA or the UK needs to send their planes around the world dropping it in all the world’s most populous countries. And bingo - in thirty years the problem is solved. Genetic facism. I thoroughly approve.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 25, 2007
From Philip Adey, Hong Kong
Hello Simon, great to hear from you. This is my second visit as an 'advisory professor' to the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Here for a month and Viga joined me yesterday. I see you're still seeking out the pop stars of the future! Neither of us seem able to retire gracefully, do we? My next big job is managing a team writing primary science textbooks for China. If it comes off, think of the eye-watering sales numbers, even if the books only sell for 50p each! It would be wonderful if we could link up somehow while I am this side of the world.
Hi Philip! I had no idea you were so close by. What a pity I can't get over there for the weekend but I'm stuffed up with travel at the moment and have to be in Sydney next week. Textbooks for China sounds like a winner. I had a great friend who spent his entire life until he was fifty living on grants and doing teaching he didn't want to do just so he could complete his great work - a Brazilian Portugese-Americn English dictionary. I thought he was mad wasting his life on it, but of course it's now the standard dictionary in its field. It's a big fat one, forty or fifty dollars, something like that, and he gets ten per cent on every one sold. Every year it sells a quarter of a million to Universities throughout the US and Brazil, and he lives the life of Riley. I have some small knowledge of the benefits of educational books because Black Vinyl White Powder is a course book in most British music business courses. But text books for Chinese primary schools!!! Are you sure they're going to pay royalties? I bet the Chinese government will be even worse at that than the major record companies.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2007
From Stephen Dare, London, UK
Hi Simon, I was looking through the list you posted last week of artists you've managed. I was surprised to see Sinitta on the list. How did you come to manager her? Doesn't sound like your kind of artist. Too poppy by half!
Nothing wrong with pop if it's done with flair! I'd known Sinitta for ages. She was a good friend of Donavon, my ex, whom I then shared a house with. She used to come to the house for dinner and Donavon wanted to manage her. But she wanted me to. In the end it was down to Simon Cowell. He was the joint owner of her record company, Fanfare, and her boyfriend too. They'd been an item for ages - broken up several times and then come back together again. Eventually I said I'd do it, but just at that moment she and Simon decided to break up once and for all. It happened just before Christmas, just after the three of us had finished planning her marketing strategy for the next year. I was spending New Year in Thailand and Simon decided to come too. It was sixteen years ago - mobile phones weren't around, nor emails. I called Sinitta everyday about business. Simon called her everday about their breakup. Because of the time difference the best time to call was about ten in the evening so Simon and I went to dinner together each evening, then to his hotel to call her. I was meant to be getting things sorted out with her for a photo shoot, for a new album, and for TV and radio promo. But Simon would grab the phone and talk about 'were they doing the right thing by breaking up' and she'd end up in tears. A totally useless situation.
It got worse when I got back from holiday and Sinitta and I went off to Poland to do a TV show I'd fixed for her - a 'Sinitta special'. The idea was that the Polish state TV would pay for it and we could then use it to promote her in the rest of the world. That weekend Sinitta was being extraordinarily difficult. First, when we arrived at the hotel in Warsaw she decided she wouldn't do the show. She said it was because they'd picked her up at the airport in a Cadillac, but the contract had said a Rolls Royce (and in those days, with Poland still a Communist country, neither were easy to come by). Then when I persuaded her to do the show after all she said the playback tapes were running at the wrong speed (which, when we checked them. wasn't true). Then she complained that there were too many other artists on the show - wasn't it meant to be HER show? I talked with the producer and he explained that these were all Poland's top artists come to open the show in her honor, then to sit in the audience and watch her perform. Sinitta didn't like that either and complained yet again so I blew my top. We had a stand up explosive row right in front of everyone during which I told her. "Piss off, I'm going back to London right now!" Then I discovered there wasn't another plane out of Warsaw till Monday morning, and this was only Friday evening. There was no other hotel so for the whole weekend I stayed in my room and read a book, apart from meal times when we had to sit on opposite sides of the same dining-room glaring at each other. Then we had to travel back on the same plane in adjacent rows.
As soon as I stopped managing her we became friends again. I bumped into her a few months ago at the Sukothai hotel in Bangkok and she introduced me to her new boyfriend - couldn't have been more pleased to see me, nor me her.
It was probably something to do with Warsaw. Under Communism it was one of the world's most oppressive cities, way worse than Moscow. It had a way of getting to you.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 23, 2007
From Jonathan Worthington, Dallas. Texas, USA
My dear Mr Napier-Bell, I have pulled you up before on the matter of language. Surely you know that the word ponce is prinicpally used to describe a woman who sells her body. If applied to a young man (having checked with the Oxford and Chambers dictionaries) I would deduce that it has the same implication. I have no idea if that was what you were trying to imply when you labelled the teenage photograph of the record producer Simon Henderson with the term ponce. On the other hand, perhaps you simply meant he looked 'poncey', a word that has fallen into use during the last fifty years implying that a person (man or woman) overdresses in the same flashy way as a lady of the night.
Hi Jonathan. As usual you're as right as you're boring. I didn't intend to imply that Simon Henderson as a teenager offered crotch services at a price, only that he dressed like someone who might have done. Were I to learn that he had done I should only think the better of him, though I would feel hard done by that he hadn't offered them to me at the time. These days his bum and his belly are almost as big as mine and his teenage sparkle has rather receded. He's probably even forgotten how to put on mascara, but he makes damned good records. In the unlikely event that his granny reads my website and would take offence at the description I gave of him, I've decided the word 'vamp' might suit the picture better.
MONDAY OCTOBER 22, 2007
From Bee Futon, Bangkok, Thailand
hiya !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wow ! we went in the studio today with Simon H .... he's amazing !!! so talented… and so Futon !!! Thanx so much for sending him our way .. U were so right ( again !!! ) Hugz & honey ! xx
Hi Bee. Good to know it’s working out with Simon Henderson – he is, of course, a producer-genius, much unrecognized internationally (but that's to come). Get him to show you his scrapbook. When he was a teenager he was in a glammy type 80s group and wore black stockings with loads of make-up. You’d never recognize the stocky straight family-man you’re currently working with. But you'll understand why he loves Futon. Don’t forget to send me a song or two when they’re finished.
Simon Henderson record producer
Simon Henderson teenage vamp. What nostrils!!
SUNDAY OCTOBER 21, 2007
From Alexis Parr, London, UK
Simon - do you believe in telepathy? - coz I just had this over whelming thought message to write you an epistle. Last week that naughty Donavon and I went out to play at some designer do in Hanover Square followed by a trip to the Ice bar (naff!) and Sketch (fab when it first opened but superceded by so many new gaffs). In the square's Ruinart champagne bar we met a very pleasant and stylishly mature Canadian couple who own 100 book stores in Canada, and Donavan's charming designer friend, Ash. It was drink-as-much-as-you-like Laurient Perrier at Sketch so I had to make my excuses and leave in the end (with Donavon last seen lurching down to the basement) coz next morning I had to face the grim reality of work - and Southwark Crown Court. Hope you are still coming over in December. xx
Southwark Crown Court?? Are you now a magistrate? Or were you the Mail’s court reporter for the day? Or under arrest, perhaps? Donavon and you seem to get an awful lot of champagne every time you meet. Sketch, I agree is not what it used to be, in fact it never really was. The room upstairs is cold and characterless and I don’t like the way in the room downstairs you get trundled out on the stroke of midnight so they can turn it into a disco. But I do remember getting the hots for a girl serving in the bar round 2am one night. Though it’s pretty useless for old queens like me to get the hots for young girls, especially in London, where it’s equally useless getting the hots for young guys too, unless they're Russian and you want to dole out 200 quid.
Enough waffle. Not sure about London in Decemeber. I’m feeling a bit travelled-out. I’ll let you know. Lots of love. xx
SATURDAY OCTOBER 20, 2007
From Leo Nine, Bangkok, Thailand
The Oz visa story is fun. It got me thinking back to my first trip to the USA. The (UK based) Martin Musical Scholarship Fund very generously paid for me to attend the Aspen Music Festival when I was 13 or 14 years old. The US Immigration form (c.1978) really was quite a struggle. It demanded answers to crazy stuff, including:
'Are you, or have you ever been, a member - or associated in any way with a member - of the Communist Party?
'Are you homosexual?'
Wrestling honestly with the concepts as best I could (keeping integrity intact), I finally, to both questions, answered: 'I don't know'.
I first went to the States the day after my 18th birthday, 1957. I remember both questions coming up in the visa form, but had less of a wrestle with them than you seemed to have done. My father - upper middle class, Oxford educated and a film director - had been a member of the Communist party for twenty years. He always sympathised with the underdog and thought soicety should be equal. But when anyone working-class came to the house - a builder, or a delivery man - he could hardly find a word to say, just stuttered in a posh voice. One of my early memories - around five years old - was sitting on the pillion of his bike while he pedalled round Communist party members' houses to collect dues for the Daily Worker (Britain's Communist newspaper). It certainly gave me an insight into a life I'd never known - 50s working class Britons had no indoor loos, no heating except smokey coal fires, lots of babies and very smelly houses. My father hated them, but still went stoically on sticking with his Communist beliefs. He was a wonderful eccentric, but there was no way I was going to let his daft politics stop me getting my American visa. So I just lied. "No! In no way had I ever been associated with a member of the Communist party." After that, the homosexual qestion was easy - just one more tick where they wanted it. But American immigration continued to be outrageously anti-gay till the late 80s. A friend of mine was going to the States do back-up voices for a tour by Elton. One of the girl singers had gone ahead but forgotten her favourite pair of stage shoes so he took them with him - silver high heals. When the customs officer found them he was refused admission.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 19, 2007
From Andy Elbert, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Hi Si! Saw you were coming to Australia in a few days time. I bet you'll be surprised how it's changed. When were you last here?
About ten years ago, so I doubt it's changed much. Though there's already one thing I've noticed...
Yo applied for his visa last week and it felt incredibly strange to remember that just ten years ago when he applied for visas (both British and Australian) the only way he could get them was for us to form a company, make him a director and invent all sorts of spurious business he would be doing for which he needed the visas. And the one thing that would have totally killed his chances would have been letting them know he was gay, or worse still that the real reason he was travelling with me was because we were a couple. The contrast nowadays is extraordinary. Yo wrote on the form that we were holidaying together and were a same sex couple. To get the visa, he didn't have to deny it - he had to prove it. So he fished out our UK marriage license (sorry... 'civil ceremony' license) and they gave him his visa. And to think that until I was 27 every erection I got was a temptation to crime. What a miraculous change!
THURSDAY OCTOBER 18, 2007
From Bimal Nair, Poona, India
Hello Simon. I saw in something you wrote a while back wrote that you used to manage Boney M which surprised me. (And did you know by the way that after all these years they have just had the number one selling album in India with all the same old songs remixed and repackaged?) Learning that you used to manage them set me thinking - are there any other artists you managed that I wouldn't know about?
I should think so, probably quite a few. Your question made me think back a bit and I surprised mself with the some of the people I remembered. I've only listed artists who had some sort of success - at least one hit record was the criterion. Here goes...
The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Tyrannosaurus Rex, John's Children, Jeff Beck, London, Japan, Wham!, Diana Dors, Blue Mercedes, Sinitta, Wa Wa Nee, Rupert Everett, Asia, Boney M, Ultravox, CC Catch, Candi Staton, Alsou, Smash!!
(Smash and Alsou were Russian artists; CC Catch was German. Jeff Beck as a solo artist was brief. Sinitta even briefer.)
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 17, 2007
From Jules Andersen, Bal Harbour, California, USA
Hi Simon. I just wanted to ask – is the Peter Christopherson who wrote to you the other day the same guy who was in that outrageous 70s group Throbbing Gristle?
It certainly is. And he was in Psychic TV too. Though when I first met him he was principally directing pop promos. They always had a great edge to them - Marc Almond’s ‘Waifs and Strays’, Jah Wobble’s ‘Becoming More Like God’, Robert Plant’s ‘Tall Cool One’ - things like that. And he was a designer too – a partner in Hipgnosis, the company that designed so many of the great 70s album sleeves - Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon', and Led Zepelin's 'Houses of the Holy'. Despite both of us living in Thailand it was nearly ten years since we'd last met, so lunch today was quite a catch-up.
Lunch with Peter Christopherson, Casa Pascal, Pattaya
TUESDAY OCTOBER 16, 2007
From Greg Sadiski, New York, NY, USA
Hey Simon. As far as I can tell I'm the only gay student in my media studies class. I'm writing my year-end paper on the subject of gay music business managers and the upsides and downsides their sexuality gives them in dealing with artists. My teacher says I should choose a different subject, but fuck him, why should I? He says that it's gender studies, not music business, but I'm going to show him he's wrong. (He plays football and is a gym freak but I reckon he's really a closet-case.) SO PLEEEASE..... I'd just love to be able to ask you some questions. Would you be prepared to answer them? I'd be SOOOOO grateful. xxx.
Hi Greg! What college are you at? What course are you taking? I get lots of request like these and I usually agree to do them. But first make sure you’ve read all three of my books. If you haven’t, and you ask questions that the books would answer, I'm likely to get pissed off (sometimes, ENORMOUSLY), in which case you could end up getting a very public verbal spanking on the website. (As well as a more private one, perhaps, from your teacher, which I suspect is what you're really looking for.)
MONDAY OCTOBER 15, 2007
From Peter Christopherson, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi Simon! Many thanks for the invitation to lunch on Wednesday, I will be there promptly, and with great interest to meet again. Jordi has been telling me about some of your recent projects which sound impressive and amazing. I am indeed sorry I have been so remiss, and that it has been so long since we had a chance to chat. If you feel more chastisement or discipline of some kind is in order, perhaps I could save you the trouble and suggest the young men below take care of it for you! (They are very reasonable, skilled in their abilities to extract the most agonised and pitiful of moans from their prisoners, and always available for any kind of similar work, should you require it.
Gosh Peter, is that the dreaded Singapore Sling hanging front-of-picture? Not my scene, I'm afraid, though since you're suggesting I hire them to chastise YOU rather than me that’s neither here nor there. However, were I to send them over to deal with you I think you might feel more rewarded than punished. So I'll attend to your punishment personally - over lunch on Wednesday, at the Sea Falcon, Jomtien.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 14, 2007
From Dean P Tailor, 'In House Counsel', Rovinge Motion Pic Co Plc, London, UK
Dear Mr. Napier-Bell, I am trying to obtain clearance to use a short portion of the following track in a motion picture production: You Don't Have To Say You Love Me by Dusty Springfield. Along with Vickie Wickham, you are the credited lyricist, though I do not know if either of you retain any rights to this composition. I thought I'd start here and see what assistance you could offer me. I look forward to hearing from you. Thank you in advance.
Dear Mr. Dean P. Tailor, everyday I get emails from people asking annoying questions. I’m normally pretty tolerant about it and answer them freely. You, however, have written rather grandly announcing yourself as “In House Counsel” for a public company that produces movies. It rather implies you're an entertainment industry lawyer yet you don't even know how to go about getting a sync license. I would suggest you get on the phone to the MCPS (the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society). Before you do so, why not go on line and google ‘How The Music Business Works’? A whole series of books will be revealed to you and a quick read of any one of them will render you a lot more competent in your job than you seem to be at present. As a lawyer, I'm sure you will appreciate the extreme modesty of my fee for this advice - a mere £350.00 - an invoice for which is attached.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 13, 2007
From Simon Henderson, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi Simon, interesting stuff all this giveaway music, and I agree with most of what you said. The major record companies have definitely had this coming for ages now! But I was also wondering about the newer artists and how they will fit into this brave new world we are entering.
Perhaps they should sell jewelry like ‘Semi Precious Weapons’, or perhaps earn money from some other non-musical profession like tailoring or the rag trade. Can’t we let the artists concentrate on just the music and entertaining us with their well publicised antics?
I know it was never just about music. But now, with the CD looking like a byproduct, a free giveaway, it’s looking more like everybody’s mum was right all along! “Get a proper bloody job”.
I’m not sure that recorded music has to be totally free, just totally free of corporate greed and incompetence – i.e. no more record companies! As for new groups having to get started by selling jewelry - it sounds positively genteel. Back in the Swinging Sixties it was often their bodies they hawked around. (Which, for managers, could sometimes be a nice bonus!)
FRIDAY OCTOBER 12, 2007
From Iain Cooper, Dubai
Dear Simon. As I closed the cubicle door in the loos of a rather plush Dubai hotel the other day, my thoughts turned immediately to you. A senior ranking officer from your army of jolly clean botty washers had obviously been there before me. Judging from the abundance of water on the seat, the walls and the floor, he had left with a beautifully clean bottom. I had a choice. Run away and find another loo. Or clean up his poo-tainted lagoon. The cultural sub-text here is a little frightening. Keep you arse clean and fuck the rest of the world. Cheers!
Well there you are – the cultural sub-text pretty much describes how Saudi Arabia has dealt with the Wasabi extremists in its midst. Anyway, just because I advocate washing over wiping I don't see how you can blame me for your Arab flood-merchant, Messy people are messy people and there's not much you can do about it. But it's good to know your still keeping your bum clean..
THURSDAY OCTOBER 11, 2007
From Harley Sears, Kansas City, USA
Simon. I work in the "music business" as a manager, filmmaker, etc. I have a personal question for you. I'm surprised at the amount of homophobia I've encountered so far in this business (mostly from musicians). I've lost track of the number of times I've heard the word fag or faggot in my presence. Keep in mind, I live in the Midwest (Kansas City) but I've been wondering what your personal experience has been. And do you feel that being openly gay has ever negatively affected your career?
Not really! I moved into the inner circle of the British music industry in the 60s mainly because I was gay, as were most of the people around me. As the business side of the music industry straightened itself out being gay was less common, yet I've never encountered homophobia as such. But then I'm not too sensitive about it and don’t really object to half the things that most gays complain about – I mean, being called a faggot or a cocksucker or a swerver. Throwing a decent insult at someone is half the fun of life. And since people on the whole are pretty annoying, and need to be insulted occasionally, why not gays too? If my homosexuality has ever been a hindrance, it's probably only because I've allowed it to be. It's more likely that I've suffered from my own solitary nature. It's that which made me opt out of the mainstream and live in Thailand whereas my ex-partner, Jazz Summers (who is straight), ploughs on and on managing thousands of people. The real problem is, I like to be a society of one and don't easily join with other groups of people. Gay or straight isn't the issue - it's just that I hate 'joining in'.
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 10, 2007
From BP Fallon, New York City, USA
Hi Simon! Radiohead have gone the free route.
Prince has given his album away for free. The moribund record industry is saying 'Oh, this is bad
for new bands'. Well, Semi Precious Weapons are a new band
and we're doing it. Free recorded music! The world is changing and soon everyone will be doing it. How do we pay for it? Semi Precious Weapons jewelry, designed by the band's singer Justin Tanter and sold at Urban Outfitters and Hot Topic, with the high-end stuff sold at Barneys. We've sold 70,000 SPW necklaces so far. And come Oct 30 when you buy $10 of SPW jewelry you also get the SPW album free.
Hi BP. I’ve got to admit it, Semi Precious Weapons are an unbelievably fantastic band. Tony Visconti has overseen a quite amazing album. If it was being sold you’d have a million seller - instead you'll have a million billion giveaway. Every chorus feels like it’s been inside your head forever. And I love the way that under the decadent façade it’s so utterly pop. In fact, more than anything it makes me think of the Spice Girls. Yep! Totally brilliant. And even more brilliant is the fact that YOU are the manager. Congratulations!
TUESDAY OCTOBER 9, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Herfordshire, UK
simon! simon!... here's me in my new overcoat...
funny thing… i'm walking through soho in this garment and i'm getting all these bemused looks as if to say what the fuck are you wearing?... or who do you think you are?... which doesn't cramp what little style I have in the least, but it does make me think... i left northern ireland with this naive notion that when i hit the big cities i'd be knee deep in the grooviest people... but i now realize london is as provincial as any farming town back home.
Well yes! And everywhere else too - from farming communities to trendy Soho queers. Whether they're teenage cliques, political cliques, gay cliques or snobby wine-tasting cliques - they become instantly provinical as soon as they start looking down on what they deem incorrect. Best to reject the whole caboodle and revel in being an outsider. Which your yellow coat sets up nicely. (Not quite my taste, but better than lilac.)
MONDAY OCTOBER 8, 2007
From Jack Sandys, Newcastle, UK
Hi Simon, re yesterday’s email... Now Oasis and Jamiroquai are at it. According to today’s papers they too are going to give their albums away free.
And why not? Financially, for the artists there’s hardly any difference. You used to give your album to the record company who ripped off your royalties. Now you just give it straight to the public. Free! It creates publicity and goodwill and makes your tour make more profitable. You can make your own decisions about when you put the record out and don’t have to sit around waiting while the record company’s marketing department faffle around changing their minds everyday. It’s enough to make me want to go back to management.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 7, 2007
From Jimmy Acer, London, UK
Hi Simon! Allan Mc Gee is releasing the Charlatans new record for free. He's been going on triumphantly about "This is the death of the record companies". I remember that you never seemed to like record companies much either. Do you feel as good as he does about all that'e happening these days? I mean, like Prince's record being given away with the Daily Mail and Radiohead offering their record for whatever you want to pay?
Of course! It's brilliant. For years now the major record companies have been nothing more than coroporate thugs. They've got so used to controlling the music industry, and now they're on the verge of getting kicked out. The new concept of management dealing with it all, or of record companies effecting becoming management companies is the only way to go. My ex-partner Jazz Summers was one of the originators of all this with Big Life Records. Everyone now realises that recorded music will soon be free - downloaded as an advertisement for the artist. And it's already happening - everywhere! Currently I'm in India. Yesterday I was with Vijay Nair and Bobby Talwar, the two brightest sparks in the Indian music industry. Their company, 'Only Much Louder', manage aritsts and release their records simply with the intention of promoting the acts. The last record they released was shrink-wrapped with a blank CDR and had a sticker saying, 'Burn a copy and give it to a friend.' Strange how everyone seems to 'get it' except the majors.
(And Bee... About the lack of outrage in Indian music that I commented on - that was before I discovered Pin Drop Violence - see the picture and link above!!)
SATURDAY OCTOBER 6, 2007
From Iain Cooper, Dubai
"I've been one poor correspondent
And I've been too, too hard to find
- but it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind."
Apologies for opening with the lyrics of a classic America tune -
hiding my feelings behind a song! Can you name the tune?
I hope you are well - I miss you. How's the book coming along? Been back and forward to Cape Town twice since we last spoke. Christina is driving a rental Nissan and complaining, but the kids are doing really well in school and, apart from missing me, are very happy. Would be great to work with you again. I really fancy a meeting at the Sea Falcon over fried mince pork with garlic. Lots of love
'Sister Golden Hair', my dear, but I preferred 'A Horse with No Name'. The book is not coming along at all. But it must! (Though I don't know when.) I'm still in India - Mumbai at the
moment, then back to Thailand for two weeks before Sydney (a
week of book promotion and talks). From there I’ve got three weeks round
South East Asia picking talent - Malaysia, Indonesia, Philipines, Viet Nam - followed (maybe) by five days in the UK - talks at universities - then to Singapore for a
three day seminar. I'll finally get back to relaxing about December 20th.
It would be good to work with you again too. I'm sure something will crop up. Come to Pattaya for a weekend and we'll do as you say - eat at the Sea Falcon, it's been the focus of several good (semi) business lunches lately, though last time I was there I had fish and it was lousy. I should have remembered how good the garlic pork was.
FRIDAY OCTOBER 5, 2007
From Bee Futon, Tokyo, Japan
hiya darling ... hope all is well in India ... Tokyo is a blast… amazing reaction!!!!! So many colourful club kids here these days... all Futon Friendly too!! Here’s a
link to what we have been doing. When R u back in the land of smiles & worthwhiles? XX
Hi Bee. Still in India, Bangalore, but leaving for Mumbai tonight. Bangalore is buzz city – almost like being in Thailand, prosperous, clean and with a fantastic climate - sunshine but only in the low 70s, really comfortable. We've actually found a couple of good bands with distinct personalities, not copycat stuff (though no-one here is likely to attempt a Futon - there's a distinct lack of outrage in the music). Back in Thailand next Wednesday.
THURSDAY OCTOBER 4, 2007
From Tony Fisher, Beijing, China
Dear Simon, on Wednesday night I was privileged to join a small dinner party in honour of Professor Sidney Rittenberg. In spite of being a friend of Mao, Zhou En Lai and other Chinese leaders, he spent a total of 16 years in solitary confinement in a Chinese prison on the trumped-up charge of being an American spy. The Chinese actually found him innocent after about 11 years but Stalin personally requested Mao that he remain incarcerated. Humorous and gracious throughout the dinner, I could not detect a grain of bitterness in him. He said, “if I had allowed bitterness to remain inside, it would have destroyed me.” He saw no-one but sour-faced guards and for several years he was not even allowed to speak to himself!
Hi Tony. I know about Sidney Rittenberg, an extraordinary man. Your email reminded me again of his life story and the amazing book he wrote about it. He went to China, got chummy with the leaders, took a Chinese name, became the only American ever to become a member of the Chinese communist party and generally entered into Chinese politics as if he were Chinese. He then fell foul of the cultural revolution and the dreadful gang of four. Which goes to show it never does you much good to meddle in other people's affairs. But he always kept his sense of humour. During one of his periods of incarceration he came up with a new Confucian saying. "Man who climbs out on limb should listen carefully for sound of saw."(Unfortunately he didn't hear the saw till too late.) Then there's his great line about his release from jail when one morning across the prison courtyard he heard the dulcet tones of Jiang Qing [Mao's wife, the leader of the Gang of Four and principal perpetuator of the Cultural Revolution]. "I heard her voice and I was very happy. I knew that - if she is coming in then I am soon going out."
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 3, 2007
From Sara Wilkerson, London, UK
Hello Gorgeous. I thought I’d drop you a quick note to say ‘hi’ and check how things are with you. However, on reading your site I see you’re in India with a bad case of the runs - not good. I’m still fighting the flab in time to look fabulous for my 40th next June. Forty - can you believe it? Yikes! I’m having a big party in London so if you’re around I’d love you to be there. I had a personal trainer come to the house this morning at 6.30am to kick my sorry (large) arse into shape. I will wear a size 10 next June, I will, I will. XXX.
Hi Sara. You'll be pleased to know the runs have stopped running, though still a touch dribbly. Indian runs are not easily thrown off and proper eating won't resume for another couple of days. This morning, though, I was up early at meetings and even went for a prowl round a Maharaja's palace, much dilapidated but still standing. I'm now in Bangalore, as clean and prosperous as Calcutta is dilapidated and dingy - in fact, if you're that keen on making a size 10 for your 40th a weekly curry taken in Calcutta might do the trick. On the other hand a personal trainer is probably more motivating, especially as I'm sure you've chosen a cute one. Lots of love, and I've put your 40th in my diary. xx
The Maharaja's stool - have you ever seen a less inviting place to sit?
TUESDAY OCTOBER 2, 2007
From Andrew Halpen, Torquay, Devon, UK
So Simon has a bad cold, does he… well you’re in the right place to cure it. Order the hottest vindaloo and eat it with two litres of sparkling water. Turn the air-conditioning off and by the morning you’ll have sweated the cold clean away. I lived in India for years. It works every time.
I don’t believe a word of it - I'd end up with pneumonia and a bleeding ulcer. Anyway my situation has now gone from bad to worse; I’ve got the runs too, so it must be some sort of gastric flu. And Marie, one of the two people I’m traveling with, woke up at 5am in the morning feeling she was about to vomit and got only as far as her suitcase before it poured out over all her clean clothes. Only Colleen, our hardy Australian, has withstood whatever attacked us and continues to sit smugly all evening knocking back her sauvignon blanc.
MONDAY OCTOBER 1, 2007
Sorry! I've got a lousy cold this morning and don't feel like ploughing through dozens of emails to find one interesting enough (or stupid enough) to make me want to reply. Instead you can have a photo.
The view from my window - Taj Hotel, Calcutta
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 29, 2007
From Janie Shepherd, London, UK
So Simon, I hear you're in India for two weeks checking out the music business there. Are you looking for artists there too? Do you really think an Indian music artist could break worldwide? Personally, I doubt it.
You may be right, but so far my time here has been musically rewarding, all four hours of it. I arrived in Calcutta tonight at
1.30am. When I walked into hotel my room I was greeted by sensational jazz blasting out of the TV (the picture being set to the hotel's 'Welcome' page) so for the last two hours I've been sitting browsing emails in the middle of night with an enormous glass of whiskey (I found some single malt in the minibar which came in a round 200ml bottle) and listening to this amazing pounding jazz circa late 50s. Now, though, I've turned on the TV to browse the local news... pictures off troops manhandling people on the streets of Rangoon, but… sorry... no... it's not Rangoon at all, it's somewhere in India. These are Indian troops firing tear gas into a crowd, arresting people in the street and bashing them over the head with batons. And now they're telling us what it's all about. People from the home town of the young chap who's just won ‘Indian Idol’ were upset about remarks a DJ made. So they rioted.
Well there you are then... in a country where winning Pop Idol brings baton-swinging tear-gassing riot police to the street there must be masses of latent talent just under the surface. Don't you think? Or maybe not! Anyway, I'm s-o-o-o-o full of whiskey. And I've got a breakfast meeting in three hours.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 28, 2007
From James Elton, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
Napier-Bell, you old rogue, haven’t heard from you in years so I googled your name and came upon your website. I thought you might be dead already but it seems you’re living the life of Riley. Totally the opposite of me! I moved here ten years ago and haven’t traveled since – do the same things every day, regular as clockwork. But that’s how I like it. If you're ever nearby do drop in.
Good heavens James, when you lived in London you seemed quite normal. What went wrong, were you wanted by the police?
How can I possibly drop in on you? I mean - who on earth has travels that take them to New Brunswick? Seal slaughterers, I suppose.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 27, 2007
From Jordi Devas, London, UK
Hey Simon! All very hectic here sorting out Futon’s trip to Japan so sadly I'm not going to make it to Pattaya before you go to India. Let's have lunch when you get back. And now I have a wild card question. Are you still in touch with Jimmy Page? As I'm sure you're aware, Led Zeppelin are playing a show in London on the 26th Nov. And being a MASSIVE fan, I'm trying to find myself some tickets. I was wondering (on bended knee), if you might have an angle on that. Cheeky of me to ask (but as we all know, if you don't ask you never get!!). Big kiss as ever.
Jimmy Page? No way. When I was managing the Yardbirds I couldn't stand the man. So much so that I refused to be his manager and paid him his share of the Yardbirds money without deducting commission. Time can change people and he might be charming these days, but he’ll certainly remember that I wasn’t. So I’m afraid you’ll have to to find an alternative way to wheedle your way into their concert. Sorry about that. See you next month.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
it's funny what you say about 'bereavement being such a bummer for everyone around the person who's been bereaved’... there was a poor man got caught in the wave of our barney-the-dog drama… i'll try to be short.
when i had my little bit of farming land in northern ireland where i would write and demo up my records, the heavy smoking of grass used to leave me terribly horny at the end of the day. sooo… there's this irish man i know who used to paint the backgrounds for ralph steadman’s brilliant scribblings... anyway, the chap had the hots for me terribly… he would come out to the farmhouse where i would tie his neck down on to my gym bench with my belt... i'd then rear his arse up and bugger him into next week. he'd shout out all these hilarious things like 'this is rape!!!"... and ...'i'll report you to the sarge'....
so...
he's older now... sixty something and is having hip replacements and the likes... but thomas my partner sort of likes him, not sexually or anything, he just has a soft spot for him and cooks him the occasional sunday lunch cos he's a bit lonely... anywayyy...
he arrived here for his dinner just as the whole barney-the-dog thing happened... poor old fella didn't know where to place himself or what to say...not that anyone could get a word in anyway… the more hot whiskies i drank the more reverie i went into about barney.
Gregory, that's your ration for the month, three days in a row is enough. Not another word about bereavement, buggery or barney-the-dog.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 25, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
simon, sorry for not replying sooner... we were out walking our golden retriever of high breeding last week when his legs went from under him and he simply died right there beside us in the forest of a heart attack. i've been inconsolable and all over the place. we buried him in the garden. i don't think i've ever lifted a shuvvel or spade in my life before... even on a beach as a child, it seemed the wrong direction for me to be taking. but there we were, blubbering our eyes out digging away. the sun set just as we finished. we then went inside where i drank all the bushmills, making hot whiskey. it was all very rustic and poetic. i walk around the house smelling the dog’s hairbrush, and i don't want to clean anything. i wonder if when men’s wives die they walk round their houses smelling their dead wives knickers. here's a track by the modern jazz quartet with freddie hubbard... all the best to you
Really sorry about the dog. Bereavement is such a bummer for everyone around the person who’s been bereaved. I've never yet worked out what one is meant to do. Just keep quiet but be around, I suppose. I got an email from a friend last night saying a mutual friend has cancer and only a little while to live. But although he’s an old friend he's someone I haven't spoken to for maybe twenty years. So what do I do? Write to him after twenty years silence saying 'sorry to hear you're dying'. It’s just not possible! But if I don't, will I wish I had later? Insoluble problem. Best solved by a few hours head-in-the-sanding - listening to the likes of Freddie Hubbard and finishing off the calvados.
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
From Bobby Marchini, Villa Christina, Zakynthos, Greece
Hello my love. Life here has a Kafkaesque quality. The Mayor is currently in jail for financial irregularities that he attempted to cover up by contracting someone to blow up the town hall, one of my clients receives email from an alien via my computer, my hitherto unknown brother has sold up in England and moved with his wife to the island, and I feel I'm being stalked by my clients... so many seem to want a personal relationship. No time for anything but work though I manage to slink up to the pool every evening and throw myself up and down for 40 laps, but that's to keep the non smoking lard off the tum. It's interesting what your doing with the talent search. At the moment you'd think the world of music consisted of decrepit dinosaurs and pop slags who throw up on their audiences, with apologies to Amy Winehouse who I hope records another CD before she dies. Interesting too that you met Gregory Gray and even more that you both clicked. Have you met many of your regulars? Was thinking of you both today when I found an old CD that had probably been a gift and then forgotten... Oscar Peterson, Woody Herman, Max Roach, Wes Montgomery, Errol Garner and Miss Ella... nice find! Anyway, it's time to close. One of my clients has had a motor bike accident and must try and find a doctor on a Sunday. Huge hugs.
Island life sounds claustrophobic. Fancying being stalked by your own customers! But then running a hotel must be a strange pastime. Regarding emails from aliens, I receive them too, like the nutter from San Diego who thought he could prove God's existence by establishing that none of us know the number of grains of sand on a Hawaian beach. Now about Gregory Gray. This website is a strange thing. I started posting a daily email and response in 2005 and Gregory's was the first one. He wrote to me as Mary Cigarettes and told me how much he liked my books. From there on he wrote back again and again and has now become my most regular correspondent, mostly discussing art and music, particularly jazz. In fact, I'd say we've become rather good friends (email friends). So when, out of the blue, he sat down next to me at the Soho Hotel bar when I was having a solitary tootle of champagne it was something of a surprise. I wasn't sure that what we'd established by email could sustain a face-to-face meeting. But it seemed to, albeit a brief one. The centre point of our correspondence these days is the regular flow of jazz mp3s he sends me - Kenton, Oscar Peterson, the sort of people you named from the CD you found. And listening to them has taken me back to being a jazz fan again after nearly thirty years. For which I'm grateful.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 23, 2007
From Alexis Parr, London, UK
saw donavan yesterday. we went for lunch at the wolseley. he not only scoffed 3 puddings and lots of champagne but also treated the budding fresh-faced actor and his pilot friend on the next table to champagne! i then found myself at a party at the wallace collection where the lychee martinis were scrummy. tonight i’m off to the guildhall for a ‘leading hotels of the world’ thrash... xx
And you predicted being sylphlike again by 2008! It’s the good life versus the good waistline, isn’t it!. Yet Donavon, for all his three puddings, hasn’t a milligram of flab on his body. Never mind, you can take heart from my own lack of success with bodysize diminishment. This week was intended for abstinence but is now booked solid with dinners and lunches. Moreover, the bottle of vintage Calvados I bought the day before yesterday is already looking dregsy. On Thursday I’m off to India for two weeks in five cities, all in Taj hotels (which always have the best restaruant in town), and dinner is already booked with friends for every night of the trip. In comparison to that your misdemeanours with lychee cocktails will look trivial indeed.
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22, 2007
From Archie Dane, Pasadena, California, USA
Dear Mr Napier-Bell, I visited your website and noticed a post in which you referred to yourself as an atheist. I would like to explain to you why atheism is an impossibility. Do you know the combined weight of all the sand on all the beaches of Hawaii? I will assume you don't. I will go further and also assume that you or anyone else would agree it impossible for any one person to have more than, say, one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. So don’t you think in the ninety-nine percent of the knowledge that you haven't yet come across there might be ample evidence to prove the existence of God? If you are reasonable you will be forced to admit that it is possible. Therefore you are not an atheist but what is commonly known as an "agnostic" - one who claims he "doesn't know" if God exists. It is interesting to note that the Latin equivalent for that word is "ignoramus."
Dear Mr Dane. Thank-you for you submission. I presume you’re looking for work as a comedian. Unfortunately I only manage singers and musicians. However I have a friend in LA who books acts for children’s parties and says there might be work available providing you can also juggle and dance on a trampoline.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 2007
From Leo Nine, Bangkok, Thailand
Dear Simon. Good to see you the other night at Sutasi, I rather enjoyed it. Sorry for leaving abruptly - my white-winometer was firmly in the red by then! You probably don't need to go there again in your daily post, but I did find it amusing that the BBC's most read 'news' story as I write is entitled 'US family tries life without toilet paper '.
Of all the inconveniences and indignities to which the family are subjecting themselves - no electricity, water rationing, candle-lit scrabble with friends etc. - the toilet paper thing is what the sub-editor has pounced upon for the headline, and the public at large seem to be, well, eating it up. Seems to me it's like the whole God Delusion thing. Once you realise which side of the fence you're, er, sitting on, the other position seems so untenable. I imagine Professor Dawkins has better things to do, but wouldn't it be great someday to see a tome on loo-roll delusion (There is no such thing as a paper-using child - only a child of paper-using parents...). Good luck in your travels,
I see no reason not to revisit the subject. It’s a matter of endless puzzlement to me that most of Europe and all of the USA prefers not to wash their bottoms after a crap but to smear the remaining shit around with toilet paper until it’s just a thin film of foul bacteria. What upsets me most is that here in Thailand all the five star hotels are built without that lovely little hose and jet of water than one finds in even the cheapest and grubbiest of public toilets throughout the country. Presumably they’ve decided that posh people prefer their bottoms dirty. Perhaps they do. In which case I’m happy to be as common as muck but with a shiny clean bum.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 2007
From John Dang, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi Simon! It was good for us all to meet again at the Sutasi launch. Puk and P'Kai from Sony seemed keen to move forward with everything, so let's try and keep this momentum going. It's a shame I didn't stay longer actually but I did have a nice chat to Tom Foley. I was stood with Puk in the main hall and he had us laughing our heads off, telling us how he left the music industry behind in favour of promoting breast enhancing herbs and how Thai country boys have large willies because they consume lots of sticky rice!!! hahaha!
Hi John. Seems you were enjoying yourself amongst my old Bangkok friends, they all seemed to like you. It's that perfect public school accent you picked up at Manchester Grammar. Unfortunately none of them have bought a record in twenty years but, knowing them as I do, I suspect their reactions to your charm will be little different from those of the average teenage girl. A good test market, so to speak. After the party finished, we went back to the hotel for further partying. Much tequila. And in the morning, much headache. Speak soon.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 19, 2007
From Ellie Meisen, Hamburg, Germany, UK
Hello Simon. You seem very content based in Thailand yet we read a lot about the coup and the resulting government. Living under a military junta, does it feel safe - are you ever nervous - is it strange?
Safe, yes. Nervous, never. Strange, often. Thai politicans have always had a penchant for strangeness, in fact, utter dottiness. When Taksin was Prime Minister, one of his ministers announced he'd come up with a really simple solution to the problem of violence from Moslem fundamentalists in the southern provinces - he would get a couple of million Buddhist Thais to relocate there from the North East. (Volunteers didn't exactly come flocking.) Recently, when people living around the new airport marched to the appropriate Ministry to protest at the excessive noise ruining their lives, the Minister thought he could solve the problem by sending them a truck load of ear plugs and sleeping pills. This morning, the TV chat shows reported a new idea from a general in the current ruling clique - the country’s problems would be solved if people had more respect for traditional Thai values. To create this he proposed passing a law to make traffic throughout the country stop for one minute at 8am and 6pm every day. Drivers would be required to turn on their car radios and stand to attention beside their vehicles while the national anthem was played. Thais have heard equally stupid things many times before. They just laugh and get on with their lives.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 18, 2007
From Tosh Berman, TamTam Books, Los Angeles, USA
Have you heard of this teenage off-shoot subculture, 'Les Zazous'? They're fascinating.
During the French Occupation they were teenagers who were devoted to Swing and pretty much ignored the world around them, meaning the Nazis and the Vichy thugs. They had a sort of pre-rockabilly look, a combination of zoot suits, hair greased up, umbrella carrying (had a British fixation), and basically spent time locating cellar clubs, underground clubs, or private homes to dance to records, etc. They were killed, mugged, and forced to get haircuts by the Vichy government (and the Nazis). And when Jews had to wear a yellow star, ‘Les Zazous’ voluntarily did the same, writing the words 'jazz' or 'swing' on the star. And they stayed the course to dance, dance, dance. Ciao
After I got your email I did some research on Les Zazous and found some pictures of them. What was most surprising was the fantastic similarity in look to Britain’s post-war Teddy Boys. The long jackets, the thick suede shoes, the narrow bottomed-trousers and the poncey swept-up hair. I’d say the Teds stole the Zazou's look lock stock and barrel. I then found the Zazous had pinched their look from the fans of Cab Calloway, cool guys in Harlem known as the Black Dandies. So there you are… Britain’s racist teddy-boys of the early 50s were dressed like cool black guys in New York in the late 30s. A nice little full-circle.
Les Zazous 1942
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 17, 2007
From Ian Shirley, Record Collector, London, UK
Simon. This is Ian Shirley from Record Collector. A reader has asked for some info about how you signed Flamma Sherman to your SNB label. I thought it would be good to get the story from the horse's mouth.
I started the SNB label in 1968 mainly because I’d got myself into an impossible production deal with EMI – they had the exclusive right to all records I produced but didn't have to pay for them. (The result of a substantial champagne lunch with the managing director two years earlier after which I’d gone back to the office and signed a contract – the incredible foolishness of inexperience). The idea of the SNB label was that I would be able to produce records at CBS’s expense and release them without a production credit but under a label named after my initials. The first artist we signed was Flamma Sherman – four exquisite sisters from Liberia with a very domineering but charming mum who bought them to me and persuaded me to sign them. (She was was the wife of the Liberian ambassador in London, George Flamma Sherman.) The girls were a posh bunch, all at public school in the UK, and exceptionally pretty. The first record was ‘No Need To Explain’ which they’d written themselves with a little help from Bach (‘Air on a G string’). The string and brass arrangements were done by Ian Green, one of the top arrangers round town (Sandie Shaw, Peter Sarstedt, etc). The resulting record was extraordinarily atmospheric – in two sections, the first slow and drifting, the second up-tempo with much ad-libbing, but not in the style of American soul, more African, which wasn’t surprising. At Radio One half a dozen of the top DJs flipped over it, including Kenny Everett. The weekend of release it was played five or six times each day but then disaster struck, Radio One had a strike. The station was off the air for two weeks and by the time it came back many new records were stacked up waiting for release. The producers of the various programmes that plugged new records decided not to go back to previous records but to go only for new ones. The record fizzled out, and although the group made a couple more singles neither were as potentially chart-topping as the first. So rather than become pop stars the girls stayed at school and went on to do the things their family background required of them. (Their mum died last year.)
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 16, 2007
From Carmel Dagiandis, Melbourne, Australia
Writing to you in regards to this Sutasi talent show. Is this going to attract many potentional contestants? Very curious to see if especially the American public will embrace an Asian talent, I have seen some footage on ‘Rain’ the Korean talent and although fantastic and I can see why he would be appealing and so huge in Asian, but the western world????? Not sure! What are your thoughts?
Hi Carmel. Re the number of contestants, in the beginning it'll be a tough job getting the word around but once an Asian artist has broken worldwide there’ll be thousands wanting to follow. I see no reason why the American public shouldn’t embrace new talent from Asia. Jackie Chan’s done alright. It’s just a matter of giving them something they like and which they don't already have. I don’t think Rain or other pretty-boy singers have much of a chance in the US, nor rap artists like Lee Hom from Taiwan. I’m expecting an American audience to be attracted to someone gutsy like guitarist Sek Loso or rockstar Toe; or someone horny like Hime the girl rapper from Japan; or something subversive like Futon; or totally odd like The Dormitory Boys from China. With all of India, China, Japan and South East Asia to search through, it's seems unlikely we'll fail to find at least one artist of world class.
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15, 2007
From Bibi Espedes, New York, NY, USA
Dearest Simon: Wow! Talk about an Aha moment! Your response to Mr. Sizer was simply brilliant! Truth be told, without strong and dedicated management there would simply be no sound or performance!
Hi Bebe. Good to know you’re still alive and bitching. Well, I hope you are, because today’s email was totally devoid of it. (I hope you’re not unwell). Lots of love. xx
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 14, 2007
From Andy Sizer, Miami, Florida, USA
Hi Si. Who’s the most difficult artist you ever managed?
Impossible to answer. All artists have bad moments. It’s an essential part of their nature. Although they brim with self-confidence onstage, they’re often full of uncertainty when they're off it. Sometimes this makes them quite unlike normal people.
When Japan got their first Top Of The Pops, bass-player Mick Karn locked himself in his flat and refused to come out so that in the end someone else had to play with the band instead of him. Marc Bolan advertised for musicians in the Melody Maker, auditioned them by choosing the ones who looked nicest and took them straight to a gig unrehearsed - when it dissolved into a shambles he blamed everyone but himself. Steve Howe walked out of a gig in Germany because the hall had been repainted. Sinitta wanted to cancel a TV show in Poland because she was collected from the airport by a Cadillac instead of a Rolls. Jeff Beck flew to London from Scotland, where he was on tour, for the sole purpose of recording a guitar solo but forgot to bring his guitar. George Michael cancelled a gig at Wembley Arena because he wasn’t well, then spent the evening at a movie in the West End and was surprised when newspapers spoke badly of him for it. David Sylvian came into my office twenty-four hours before a sold-out gig at the Lyceum and announced he was canceling it because no-one would come. “But it’s totally sold out”, I told him, “there’s not a single ticket left”. “That doesn’t mean a thing,” he said, “I’m sure no-one will come.”
But despite these bad moments, in the end you have to see it from the artist's point of view. The artist is the one who’ll be booed off stage if he performs badly, or slated by the critics if he makes a bad album, or shot at by some maniac just for being famous. Artists take all the emotional hits and expect their managers to be understanding. Mostly we are.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 13, 2007
From Angela Shane, Cardiff, UK
Hi Simon. I read your website often but am puzzled why you never seem to touch on anything in the news. I’m sure you have opinions, and probably worth hearing too, and yet… Iraq, Iran, Bush, Brown, the EEC, the McCanns – hardly ever a squeak from you. Any reason?
There’s enough people already writing about these things, though about the McCanns, I admit there’s something I’m puzzled to have missed in all the reports I’ve read.
Every reporter seems to touch on the problem of choosing between a couple whose child was abducted or a couple who might have murdered their daughter. Sympathy or loathing.
Personally I don’t get it. Whatever happened, the McCanns still need sympathy. Either way they're in a hell of a mess trying to bring up their two remaining kids, giving them smiles and happiness each day regardless of all else going on around. If Madeleine was kidnapped and the Portuguese police have got it all wrong – well, what a nightmare. But so is the other alternative. In a moment of anger the mother hits her child and it dies. In another crazy moment the mother decides to cover it up. From that moment on it’s a terrifying downhill path, one lie compounding the other with no way out. Yet it implies no evil on the part of the mother or lack of love for her child; just a terrible mistake from which there’s no coming back. Moreover, if that's what happened, what she's living with inside must be unbearable, deserving of more sympathy, not less.
Everyone at sometime or other (as a child perhaps, or when questioned by the police, or at work by the boss, or to their wife or husband about a bit of flirting) must have covered something up and lied about it. Then found themselves in that terrible sinking morass that a lie leads to. Surely it’s something the average person is capable of understanding.
Whether one version of events is true or the other, Kate and Gerry McCann are still in the same horrendous mess - they've lost a daughter they love, have two kids to bring up in impossible cirumcstances and have an awful lot on their minds. It's a catastrophic emotional car-crash which can only be solved by the truth being revealed, psychological help being given and a lot of time allowed for healing. From whichever scenario the situation has arisen, what is needed is sympathy. Not loathing.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 12, 2007
From Anne Lynn, London, UK
Simon. I gather you’re involved with a company that is searching for new talent from end to end of Asia. Do you really think there’s any more chance of finding people with talent there than there would be in the UK or USA?
No - no more chance at all. But two things. One, these days I’m living in Asia, so for me it’s the obvious place to be looking. Two, no record or management companies anywhere in Asia have any belief in their artists having international possibilities. Performers of a quality that could make them stars in the UK or USA are not being given that chance. Because of that Asia becomes a positive gold mine of unsigned talent. Rather like any of the provincial cities of the UK back in the 60s - Liverpool for instance, which filled the UK charts for a decade once people had caught on that pop stars didn’t have to come from London. Moreover, Asia is the nicest place I can think of to be living, working and meeting people.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11, 2007
From Harry Morgan, London, UK
Other than being a mate of yours I dunno know who the Honorable Knobhead Franklin is, but one thing’s for sure, he’s right about you being a fat pig. I looked back through your CV and you were once a decent looking geezer. What happened mate? Why don’t you lose a bit of flesh off your midrift and get some of those old good looks back?
Funny you should mention it. Yesterday, when I got that email from my friend Ron (the Honorable Knobhead you mention), I realised I wouldn’t be able to stand him being thinner than me. So I instantly went on the super SNB two-day diet guaranteed to lose 48 kilos in 48 hours. The results are immediate – see below. Anyone interested can send a money order for ten thousand dollars and a stamped addressed envelope.
The whale on his sofa
The whale diminished
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 10, 2007
From The Honorable Ronald Franklin, Bangkok, Thailand
Hi Mr Moo. My weight is going down and my sugars are stabilised. I am still fatter than you but that shall soon change… I shall soon look lovely and slim when pictured next to you and might even think of resuming my modelling career. Had lunch at the Normandie 3 days ago with a relative of Joseph Cotten - remember the actor? - he was Dad’s best friend… they lived next door to each other at the Hotel Blackstone in NYC and I grew up having Shirley Temple cocktails with him in the Dogwood Room downstairs on weekend visits to Dad.
Ron, being British I’ve managed to live my while life in ignorance of anything called a Shirley Temple cocktail. I just looked it up and have now learnt it’s a sickeningly sweet non-alcoholic drink for children. Joseph Cotten plying you with them when you were still in short trousers is probably the reason you've hardly touched another non-alcoholic drink since. It seems he's got a lot to answer for. On the other hand he was a pretty good actor and starred in one of the great movies of my early childhood, The Third Man. There's something else though. To be drinking this sugary Shirley Temple drink you must have been no more than ten. But I thought you'd spent your childhood mostly in Brazil. You see - after all this time you’re still a mystery to me. You can clarify it over our next lunch. Or on Thursday at the Sutasi party.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 9, 2007
From James Alderton, Canterbury, Kent, UK
Simon, in your column yesterday you mentioned the word ‘recommend’ in relation to restaurants. Always before you’ve insisted you don’t 'recommend' restaurants you just let people know the ones at which you had a good time. Why the switch?
No switch. You’re right - my ‘Eating Out’ section has nothing to do with criticising food or recommending restaurants, it’s just letting you know the places where I had a great meal – food, wine and company.
I could never be a ‘food critic’. Nine times out of ten I’ve forgotten the next morning what I ate, even when it was delicious. Wine is my main thing and if it’s me in charge of the dinner I’ll choose the wine first and find some food to go with it. If anything I'm a ‘restaurant critic’. If a place doesn’t feel right, you’re not going to have a great time even if the food is terrific. But if it feels perfect, you'll probably have a good evening even if the food is average. To that end, Michael Winner is definitely a ‘restaurant’ rather than a ‘food’ critic, yet he does talk about quite a lot about the food. Much more than AA Gill, for instance, who actually knows more about it.
Gill focuses on making his reviews funny. (“The service was a flirty-eyed Italian boy who kept murmuring, 'Good choice. Very nice. Oh, yes', as if buying lingerie.”) Yet Gill really knows his food and sometimes talks about it in a most erudite manner. The trouble is, he’s a non-drinker, and people who don’t drink usually seem to prefer more complex styles of cooking. It's because - with the contrast of flavour between wine and food missing - the non-drinker’s palate has to find extra contrast within the food alone. Restauranteur Marco Pierre White is also a non-drinker; as a result the dishes at his restaurants are always more messed-around with than they need to be – fresh oysters in aspic jelly. Well who needs that if the oysters are really fresh?
The greatest writer on food was R.W.Apple who wrote for the New York Times but died last year. He was both a ‘food’ AND a ‘restaurant’ critic and and every word was a treat to read. Given a piece to write on "Ten Restaurants in the World Worth Getting on a Plane to Go To", from England he chose only Wilton's. (“The best English food, as opposed to the best food in England, which these days is so grandly cosmopolitan.”)
Nowadays not many people in London know of Wilton's. In the grand British tradition of perfect food with proper service at extortionate prices, it's unbeatable. Even perhaps by the Grill Room at the Connaught.
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 8, 2007
From Sue Lilley, London, UK
Simon. I just had a meal at La Brasserie on Brompton Road which you have recommended several times on your website. It was dreadful. The waiters were inattentive, my steak was underdone, we were deafened by mindless chatter and the house white arrived without an ice bucket so it was warming up the whole time we were eating our meal. When I complained to the head waiter he told me Michael Winner had eaten there recently and enjoyed it very much - what the fuck does that mean? It’s the last time I ever go to any restaurant you recommend.
Sue - sounds like you're still the same stingy old loudmouth I've always known. I can't imagine why anyone would want to look after you nicely in a restaurant (or anywhere lese for that matter). Learn to eat steak as it's meant to be eaten, underdone. Smile and speak nicely to the waiters and they’ll be attentive. Order good wine and they’ll bring the ice bucket. (But since you were eating steak, they probably thought you'd ordered the white to go with your starter and were planning to move on to red rather than sitting and admiring the bottle for an hour.) As for Michael Winner, he’s a pretty good judge of these places. Some good at least seems to have come from your meal - if it’s a guarantee you won’t be there when I am, I’ll make a point of recommending any restaurant I’m about to visit in order to keep you away from it. Perfect!
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 7, 2007
From Tosh Berman, TamTam Books, Los Angeles, USA
Hi Simon. The piece you sent me on Kit Lambert is excellent! He's a fascinating character. Did you know Andrew Oldham wrote a book about his fellow managers - it's really good. I am not sure what his plans are for the manuscript, but like you he has the insight and he knows how to put words together on a page that is fascinating as well. On a personal note, a book of photographs just came out by my late father, Wallace Berman. To promote it I have been forced to go into his world of art-making via the Beat scene and early Hippie years. Which is both great but kind of weird as well. I am pretty much a 'now' person and to go back to your childhood is a strange trip. Is it strange for you to write about your past, or is it a pleasure? Reading your memoirs it just seems really fun with incredible characters. Ciao
Hi Tosh. I know about Andrew's book. I wrote something for it, though I don't know when it's coming out.
With regards to writing about the past... when I go as far back as schooldays it's something of a problem. If I really get back into how I felt at the time it can be depressing. But if I write about it flippantly, in today’s voice, it doesn’t create the mood of the period. Christopher Isherwood sometimes dealt with this by simply calling himself Christopher and treating himself like a character in a novel, writing in the third person and dodging responsibility for the person, or persons, he once was. (Though when he's pleased with the company he keeps - Auden in China, Spender in Germany, Hockney in California - he simply becomes himself.) For me, that doesn’t work. Whatever I was doing and whoever I was with, even if a few things about me have changed, I still feel it was always me. And since whatever I write is going to be in the past anyway - yesterday, last week, last year, last century - I prefer to write about it as if it's just happened, which in most cases is how it feels. But not schooldays - they seem an aeon away. If I avoid depressing myelf by leaving out the miserable bits then capturing the feel of the period will be impossible. So to keep it fun I've decided it needs to be all mixed up with life today. Very complicated.
THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 6, 2007
From Gregory Gray, Hertfordshire, UK
i always find it terribly interesting how the breeders love to feel disgusted at homosexuals at the drop of a hat. it thrills me even... but just what part of us is it that connects with them so deeply that they should get so hot under the collar about it all?. there's always some jim saying how disgusted he is at us and our supposed toilet sex... last time i checked the heteros were at it like the hammers in club toilets all over town (office toilets too)... a quick line of rubbish cocaine and they're bonking their paris hilton lookalikes in the cubicles like there's no tomorrow....
It's odd isn't it - I think they're objection to gay sex in the toilet is based mainly around it being solicited there. Puts them in the firing line, so to speak. Even so, I have to say that a toilet is the last place I'd like to have sex, and I've never done it... oops! yes I have, I just remembered... and it was with a girl.
I was in southern Spain in my mid-twenties staying with an elderly gay couple. The family next door came for afternoon tea and I was delegated to make the sandwiches. The mother, knowing I was safely gay, sent her fifteen-year-old daughter into the kitchen to help me and the next thing you know she'd dragged me into the loo and was bonking me rotten. Jolly good it was too. And the cucumber sandwiches were much delayed.
WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2007
From Nick Dean, Sunderland, UK
Simon, I’m surprised by your sudden interest in sport. Is this a real interest, or is it just a further example of your general cantankerousness? I mean, does it go further than slagging off Americans for playing the wrong games? And anyway, why is it that you’re always so down on them?
I’ve always enjoyed watching certain sports (better on TV than in the flesh) though it’s not obsessive. Till I was fifty I played squash almost every day and at one stage got quite good. But I was always a bad winner. As soon as I got ahead I became instantly bored and lost determination. But as soon I got behind I played like a demon till I got back on even terms, which I usually did. To be honest I had something of the same failing managing artists. Breaking new artists was difficult and consequently stimulating. Looking after them once they were successful was a bore. What great winners have (both sportsmen and businessmen) is the ability to play, when they’re ahead, with the same manic energy as a person who's fighting for survival. Sane people, of course, prefer to relax and enjoy their winnings. Perhaps that sums up the difference between how Europeans and Americans run their respective countries.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 4, 2007
From Ben Schultz, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Biting off nipples!!! Is this cannibalism? Or S&M? Simon - please conduct your website with more decorum, we can do without these insights into your lustful life. Anyway it’s been a while since I last contacted you. My two kids have grown up some. Gerry’s now in his high-school basketball team. I know, I know… you couldn’t care less, the game’s far too straight for you, and anyway Brits never understand the games Americans enjoy. Just letting you know how the other half live. Ciao.
Hi Ben! No S&M involved. ‘Biting off nipples’ goes no further than a soft chew. As for basketball, it's as dumb as a game can get. There seem to be twenty or so periods, the first nineteen of which are simply for the purpose of getting the score of both teams into the 90s – consequently the only period that can possibly be worth watching is the last one. Obviously it was originally devised for people of normal height and was intended to end in sensible scores, 10-12, that sort of thing. Basically, everyone cheated and searched out leggy giants of 7 foot and over. End result – it’s just a freak show. Nothing to do with being gay or straight – just a stupid game. Still… good to hear from you. What idiot sport is your other son doing? Pro-wrestling?
MONDAY SEPTEMBER 3, 2007
From Bud Zylander, Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Hi there Simon! George Michael, one of your ex-artists was done for it, now we have a US Senator done for the same thing. So what do you think of this sex in the men’s room stuff. I’m not gay but I have no problem with people who are. As far as I’m concerned it’s none of my business. Even so I find it this men’s room sex difficult to take. Sleazy and nasty. I really can’t like anyone who does it. How do gays like you feel about it?
Gays like me? I’m not sure what that means. I'm the sort of gay who would like to bite Futon's nipple (see above), or even Mick Jagger's (when he looked like he did in the photo at the top of this piece), but not in a toilet. Looking for sex in toilets is as far from my scene as you can get. I hate to walk in a toilet and see it happening, and if it delays me getting to a cubicle when I'm in urgent need of a crap it makes me furious, yet in terms of a crime I rate it about equal to eating with your mouth open. Perhaps restaurants should employ police to entrap people in the cocktail bar, checking while they eat their cashews, refusing them entry to the restaurant if they can't keep their lips together. If they're senators, they would then be required to resign, especially if they've spent their career supporting legislation to criminalise bad table manners.
SUNDAY SEPTMEBER 2, 2007
From Marc Spitz, New York, NY, USA
Simon, can you tell me… (in 60s and 70s British pop) there’s a lot of talk, both
open and via implication of buying one's way into the charts. Kenneth Pitt (Bowie’s manager) did so with “Space Oddity” for 140 pounds. Was a lot of this just hype?
Without the money from the actual sales, what was the point? I ask
because the “illusion of success” was a big tactic of Bowie’s later management company, MainMan.
Chart success WAS success. It wasn’t an illusion of success. A top thirty record meant you could get on Top of The Pops. Top of the Pops, until it stopped a couple of years ago, was the moment your image, your face, your reality could be exposed to the public. It co-ordinated the public’s minds with the cute new song they’d been hearing on the radio. It generated more sales. It meant Top of the Pops again next week. It meant interviews with New Musical Express, Melody Maker, Record Mirror. It was the point at which you clicked or you didn’t, and if you did, you became a big star. All this for 140 quid paid to a chart fixer. What a bargain! The fixer would then drive round the country buying records from key record stores. Saying you’d done this wasn’t just a lot of hype, it was the essential piece of business that had to be done to ensure the public had a chance to see your artist. Trouble was – I have no idea where Ken Pitt found someone to do it for 140 quid. I always paid loads more than that. And by the end of the 70s it had gone up to nearly a thousand a week.
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