What a day. And I was the “manager” too. Better spend some of the advance and get myself a Brian Epstein suit, get Gekko’d up ready. Shame I was only ACTING the part of being a business killer. Doing it really well too. But here’s the thing and allow me a little poetic license here, it was like being Steve Jobs with a rock band, the mad brilliant inventor but most definitely NOT an Alan Klein or Malcolm McLaren, interested only in the deal and the money and the ‘scam’. I did not know this though at the time, and there was no one there to advise me that by acting the part I was playing a very dangerous game with all that I had created. It was too late by then, I had taken on that role and I was pumped, I was confident, I was invincible........
EMI had a great team, Dave Ambrose, Ray Still, head of marketing, David Munns even the head of EMI loved us, loved me. I could talk them into anything because they believed so utterly in me and the mischief was such fun, such japes, so plausible, and, most of all we were in the ascendent to success, that elusive Valhalla seldom glimpsed by the other normals on the label. And I sold them the story brilliantly. I was the Saatchi of Rock.
We were still gigging during these heady times. Everything we touched turned to gold and we had not even made the record yet. Just those 10 demos made on a 4 track Portastudio in Magentas sitting room.
Oh HOW those were the days in the record industry. It was like the Wild West, and even though you knew the bad guys would screw you eventually, you went in to rob them of as much upfront cash as possible before they did.
Those days are gone now for so many reasons and I don’t need to tell you how it happened and why all the big games are over. In retrospect, knowing what I now know and how extraordinary that moment was in my life, I should have just signed the million pounds publishing deal (and we were definitely offered them) and moved to San Tropez double-quick while I had the chance.....but that could never have been. After all it had taken to get me to this moment, there was no question of take the money and run, we were definitely in for the long haul - or so I thought....
We signed, as was my dream, part of the script, to E.M.I. England’s finest. Corner stone. Beatles, Pistols. Manchester Square here I come. And did we get 4 million pounds? Well not quite.....
Journalist Chris Salewitz had randomly plucked that figure out of the air for a piece he was writing about us in the Sunday Times and four million pounds translated in to six million dollars, so we became the “six million dollar band’ which appealed to me because I loved “Six Million Dollar Man”, the tv series in America starring Lee Majors. As usual I didn’t stop to think of the implications of this new boast and the type of headlines it would generate.
TJ and Magenta arrive for a meeting