Money Makers Music Moguls: Masters of Pop

This programme contains strong language.

'Simon Napier-Bell is a pop manager...'

That's right. I've been doing this job for 50 years

and I've seen it all.

MUSIC: Viva Las Vegas by Elvis Presley

That's me in 1966 when I was managing the Yardbirds

and Marc Bolan.

This is me today, and I can tell you some things haven't changed much.

It's still about fame, adulation and lots and lots of money.

And behind the scenes there's always been a manager,

keeping the whole crazy show on the road.

But why do artists need us?

What is it we actually do?

Well, my belief is that when God gives you something special -

a talent - he takes a little bit away from somewhere else.

If you look at any artist, they've all got something missing...

and I'm the guy that replaces it.

I kind of realised that if I was going to sign a kid,

I couldn't just be his manager, I couldn't just be his label.

I had to be the adult in his life.

It is the shittiest job because if the band fails, it's the manager.

If the band makes it, it's the artist.

Artists always think that everything's the manager's fault.

And the managers accept this!

That they're going to be blamed.

You're not a good manager

unless you take the blame for everything that goes wrong.

Managers are only as good, I believe, as the artist they manage.

That is so important.

The last manager I had, what an arsehole he turned out to be.

I've still not been paid for... What was it?

..Through The Keyhole.

You kind of need somebody who doesn't get involved in partying

and who just gets on with doing a professional job

of managing your career.

You're not the artist. You're not even in the band.

You're the manager.

So...get in that room, and go manage!

# Viva! Viva Las Vegas! #

I'm going to take you all on a rock and roll journey

that you'll never forget, as we raid the rock vault together!

# I'm on a highway to hell!

# Highway to hell! #

I'm in Las Vegas because a show I dreamt up has become the most

successful music show on the Strip.

Raiding The Rock Vault tells the history of rock through the music.

But I want to tell you the same story through the managers.

It seems fitting that the story should start here in Las Vegas

because the first manager to really hit the big time made Vegas

the centre point of his artist's career.

I think modern rock management, pop or rock management,

started with Colonel Parker and Elvis.

# Well, it's one for the money

# Two for the show

# Three to get ready Now go, cat, go. #

Elvis was just a young hillbilly before his manager,

Tom Parker, turned him into the king of rock and roll.

From the moment he first saw him, the Colonel knew there was

a fortune to be made from those swinging hips and throaty larynx.

To me, what management is about is you take the art,

if that's what it is, and you turn it into commerce.

Parker had been a circus huckster,

with a carnival man's flair for bringing the punters into the tent.

He brought sort of circus instincts to rock and roll,

but he was the one who first understood, I think,

how big somebody like Elvis could be.

He spotted the emerging teenage market

and, within a year, both he and Elvis were millionaires.

Since nobody had done it before, he made his own rules.

The Colonel earned 50% of Elvis's earnings. 50%!

So, that was the power of managers in those days.

# Do anything that you wanna do

# But uh-huh honey lay off of my shoes... #

Colonel Parker looked for the best deals,

was tough in negotiating and ruthless in carrying them out.

He was very unbending.

And so he became known as tough because he never compromised.

# Well, you can do anything

# But lay off of my blue suede shoes. #

Elvis was going into Vegas and they offered him £50,000 a week.

To be in Vegas.

That was a lot of, lot of money in those days.

A lot of money today. And the Colonel's famous quote was -

"That's all right for me - what about my boy?"

He knows that everybody in the world wants Elvis.

So that's the position he's in.

He doesn't have to do anything.

# I'm just a roustabout... #

Like any pioneer, Colonel Parker made it up as he went along.

But many of his management decisions are still relevant today.

Lesson number one? Diversify.

Why stop at rock and roll when you can expand that into a movie career?

A succession of utterly dreadful films made both Parker

and Elvis very rich.

But because the Colonel didn't give a hoot about quality control,

by the mid-60s Elvis' career was taking a bit of a nosedive.

Elvis would do any movie if he was paid a million dollars.

Simple as that. Didn't even read the script.

This was a very monetary-based type of management.

Parker was in the right place at the right time to take

full advantage of the new pop phenomenon.

He showed that music management could be very lucrative indeed...

But it was his flair for showmanship that made him stand out.

I mean, he wasn't a real colonel.

He wasn't even a real American.

Colonel Parker was never a naturalised US citizen,

and he couldn't leave the United States.

So Elvis Presley never toured outside the United States.

Now there's some real management for you, there!

So America had Elvis. We had...

# I won't stay out

# I won't tell lies

# Give us a smile and wipe your eyes... #

..Tommy Steele.

He became so famous, so quickly, that he was filming this -

his own life story - just months after his first hit single.

# The finest jewels, the finest rings

# I'll be an angel minus wings... #

The man responsible for his meteoric rise was his manager.

A shrewd puppet master every bit the equal of Colonel Parker.

In the staid, respectable neighbourhood of Kensington,

there's a nice upper-income-bracket block of flats.

Inside, a doormat, over which pass some rather flashy feet.

The doormat belongs to Mr Laurence Maurice Parnes,

who also owns a batch of golden boys...

He creates them - and manages them and their money.

Like Parker, Parnes spotted there was money to be

made from the emerging teenage market.

But unlike Parker, he didn't stop with just one star.

Larry Parnes was possibly the sort of Simon Cowell of his generation.

He had a stable of artists that he applied a set of rules to,

in terms of building and promoting their careers.

And his technique was to take young guys and give them amazing names...

There's Ron Wicherly - 17, known to his fans as Billy Fury.

Roy Taylor, 18, alias Vince Eager.

Duffy Power - real name Raymond Howard, 17.

And John Askew or Johnny Gentle - 22, from Merseyside.

And I always felt sorry for Johnny Gentle.

HE CHUCKLES

You know, fancy being called Johnny Gentle?!

HE HARMONISES

No, no, that's not the sort of song we want...

Parnes' managerial strategy was to take songs that were already

hits in America, get his boys to record cover versions, and release

them in the UK before the American versions could enter the charts.

HE SINGS

# With my baby... #

But although all his artists had at least one hit,

none of them became very rich.

Unlike Larry himself, whose nickname was "Parnes, Shillings and Pence"...

The artists would be on a weekly wage.

They wouldn't know what they were earning from records, generally.

As long as they were getting their whatever

they were getting a week, they were happy.

Because they had nothing before that, so they were happy.

It wasn't till people got wise later on, there was a lot more

money in the music business, that was floating around than the artists realised...

Don't you ever feel that you are being manipulated,

just like a puppet, sometimes?

-It all amounts to having faith in your manipulators, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

Parnes' manipulative style of management served him

well through the '50s, but it couldn't last.

In the '60s, aspiring pop stars started writing their own songs.

And they were becoming a little wiser to the

machinations of the industry.

MUSIC: Love Me Do by The Beatles

The most famous manager of this new era was almost a carbon

copy of Larry Parnes.

But Brian Epstein wasn't just in it for the money...

# Love, love me do

# You know I love you

# I'll always be true... #

Epstein was a house furnisher who developed a sideline

in gramophone records.

He got The Beatles their first record - Love Me Do

in October 1962.

Its brisk sale on Merseyside helped to hoist The Beatles

into the popularity charts published in the music papers.

In the first five years of the '60s, most of the managers who

became successful were gay, and the reason is probably because in

those days - when homosexuality was illegal - anyone who was gay,

under 25, and entrepreneurial, had learned to lead a very double life.

I mean, they would have to act in general as

if they were straight, but they would also know gay life.

They became very good people at building bridges between

two different types of people. They got on well with the young people they managed,

most of them came from the same sort of background - in those days,

mainly public school, middle class - as the executives in the record company.

# She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah... #

And in fact, if you're looking for an artist who's going to

appeal to a young teenage-girl fan, perhaps a gay manager's

sensibility about what boys they fancy is a good way to choose.

I hadn't had anything to do with pop management, management of pop artists

before that day that I went down to The Cavern Club.

The Beatles were then just four lads on that rather dimly-lit stage,

somewhat ill-clad, and the presentation was...

Well, left a little to be desired, as far as I was concerned...

What Epstein principally did as a manager is created an image for The Beatles.

They were very rough and ready, and he calmed them down.

He wanted to have four boys he could take home

and introduce to his mother for tea.

So he made them cut their hair,

although Beatles haircuts were so long, at least they were tidy.

He made them wash, he made them shave,

he made them wear suits, bow after each song, thank the audience.

In every possible way, he made them very respectable

and pretty and nice.

# Yeah, yeah, yeah... #

SCREAMING

Like Larry Parnes, Brian Epstein took working-class lads

and overhauled their image.

Where the two managers differed was that Epstein wasn't in it

just to exploit his boys for personal gain.

He believed in them and wanted to help them fulfil their potential.

Part of his whole ethos was to be fair and generous with the group.

You know, he never thought of employing them. He would go to a lawyer

and ask "What does a management contract have to consist of?"

and give them an even more generous contract.

You know, he wanted to be their friend.

# Can't buy me love

# Love... #

He was brilliant at image and presentation,

but not too savvy when it came to other business deals.

Most famously, he signed away The Beatles' merchandise rights

for just £100 advance and 10% of the profits,

thinking they were a distraction.

# I don't care too much for money

# Money can't buy me love... #

He wasn't a cut-throat manager at all. He was a gentleman.

And maybe that's why he got caught out on a lot of business deals.

When The Beatles merchandise sales went stratospheric,

the group were estimated to have lost out on 100 million.

How ruthless do you think you've got to be?

Not very.

It may even be a fault of mine in the business

that I'm not ruthless enough.

The fact that they made some poor deals is neither here nor there,

they were making great, great songs.

The poor merchandise deal wasn't really Epstein's fault,

because nobody knew how it would pan out in those days.

Nowadays, managers will get a fashion line into the shops after

one hit album, but in those days, the manager's job was

thought of only in terms of finding and breaking new artists.

And at that, Epstein had done brilliantly.

He'd never been out there particularly managing rock bands

or pop bands before.

And yet within a few months, almost, he'd got a stable of artists

that were pumping out this conveyor-belt line of hit singles.

So I mean, with Brian he really was kind of learning as he went along.

And he wasn't the only one.

The Beatles' phenomenal success encouraged an entire generation

of kids to pick up guitars and copy them.

It was Epstein's lasting legacy as a manager.

SCREAMING

One of Epstein's former employees had been watching and learning, too.

Andrew Loog Oldham is the man who discovered

and broke those other '60s megastars - The Rolling Stones.

From being at the epicentre of '60s Swinging London, Oldham now

lives somewhere in the jungles of Colombia.

To find him, you have to go into the Heart of Darkness.

# Take my picture, cameraman

# Can you tell me who I am?

HE SPEAKS SPANISH

I got to Bogota in 1975. Now it was kind of my turn to get a life.

You know, because thus far, in some ways, I'd spent my life

looking after other people's lives.

Well, I could start again.

You know... And I did.

I like it here, you know...

And it likes me.

CHIMING

As a young manager, Oldham was aggressive, decadent and

totally focused on winding up the establishment.

He delighted in it.

Shall we say, 5% of people in the music business are in it for the right reason.

Money. They should be in it for money.

These days, however,

he's reluctant to take too much credit for the Stones' success.

Managing the Rolling Stones, while it worked,

you couldn't ask for anything more.

Because you were a fan, and all your dreams were coming true.

We were all incredibly young. I'd never managed anybody.

They knew that.

So there was no - "Oh, Andrew knows what he's doing."

It was basically - "We can trust Andrew."

Until we can't...

So what I'm really telling is - I'm not a manager.

Because if I WAS a manager, I'd have stuck it out.

What are you, then?

I... Probably...

I was meant to be the person who brought

The Rolling Stones into your life.

MUSIC: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones

Having worked on The Beatles' publicity for Brian Epstein,

Oldham knew the ins and outs of breaking a band.

But there was no point copying what had already been done.

The Beatles had given the public clean-cut heroes.

What was now needed was a bunch of dirty villains.

He wanted them to become the anti-Beatles.

You know, The Beatles and The Stones, there was

a division point between the two.

You were in one camp or the other. It was a reality.

So The Beatles were the happy mop tops

and The Stones were the dirtier, angrier, long-haired,

slightly sort of unkempt, slightly more threatening alternative.

And Andrew Loog Oldham built that image up,

and it was kind of his idea to do that.

But for all the "anti-Beatles" talk, it was Andrew's connections

with them that gave The Stones their first monster hit.

We were in Great Newport Street, downstairs in Ken Colyer's

jazz club, and the rehearsal was going terribly.

So I left.

And as I walk up the steps from the basement... I turn right.

And getting out of a cab in front of the Leicester Square tube station

are John and Paul.

Remember, it's now the autumn of '63,

and I've only stopped working for them in the spring.

So it's "What's up, Andy?"

And they come down,

and they say - "We've got this song which we're working on..."

and they start going through it in front of The Rolling Stones.

And it was like a...

..magic class.

The moment I heard Brian Jones pick up the bottleneck and do that,

I died and went to heaven.

I knew it was going to be a hit.

# I wanna be your man

# I wanna be your man

# I wanna be your man... #

One of the managers' tricks Oldham imported from America was how

to rig the charts. Not enough to get to number one,

just enough to get some momentum going.

It was very easy, man, you know.

I mean, 46 shops maybe reported to the charts,

so all you had to do was go in and buy on the right day.

The Rolling Stones fans

would come down to the office - I was willing to give them

a postal order for five shillings and seven pence, and they would be

told which store in Leicester or Market Harborough or wherever.

And two or three of them would get in a cab or get in their

parents' car, and drive round and buy the records.

And on Monday morning, Decca thought, "Wow, we've got

something here..."

Because you have to make the record company

fall in love with you twice, always.

Once - when they sign you,

and the second time when they can see the beginning of a result.

MUSIC: Not Fade Away by The Rolling Stones

# I wanna tell you how it's gonna be... #

You have to remember, in the '60s too, all these groups were

really being created to be screamed at by girls.

Everybody saw girls as the market they were chasing.

There was one time when I was at the Finsbury Empire

and when The Stones starting playing I heard a girl

screaming at the back.

And I looked and I couldn't see, and I walked to the back

and I found Andrew under a row of seats, screaming - "Aaahhhh!"

Very soon, they were all screaming.

SCREAMING

# What a crazy sound

# And we never stopped rocking... #

I think it's got more to do with "What can I do while they're on?"

You know, I'm not going to stand there and look like a manager

in the wings going, "Oh, my boys are doing well." You know what I mean?

So I'm out there causing a bit of bother.

# I said the joint was rocking... #

SCREAMING

Oldham was the first manager to be as wild as his band.

He was the same age as them and

he joined in their hedonistic drug-addled '60s lifestyle.

But it couldn't last...

As Keith said, very kindly, in his book, basically I served them

whilst what I liked worked.

So I was a fan of theirs and I loved pop music.

There came a certain stage in their life where pop music was not enough

any more, and that was the beginning of the end of my life with them.

Hey, the easiest way out of it is to go,

"Look, it was four years in the life of a band that have had 50."

By the time Andrew Loog Oldham left The Stones,

the music business was becoming a shark pool.

Vast sums of money swirled around men of dubious character.

MUSIC: The Godfather Theme by Nino Rota

And the most ruthless shark in the pool was the self-styled

Al Capone of pop, The Don...

..Don Arden...

Don Arden! You were going, dun, dun DUHHH!

Don Arden?

Don Arden, Sharon Osbourne's old man, was a legendary,

notorious Salford/Manchester gangster.

If I've ever exploited anybody it's for their own benefit,

it's because they want to be exploited.

Our house was always, always full of artists -

coming in and going out, because my father worked from home.

There would be showgirls, dancers - coming in and out.

It was never boring, you never knew, coming back from school,

what's going to be there waiting for you.

And a lot of the times it was my father -

crazy about someone who he's going to kill and beat the shit out of...

MUSIC: Lazy Sunday by Small Faces

Don Arden's biggest act in the '60s was the Small Faces.

By 1966, they'd had four top-ten hits and done endless moneymaking tours,

yet still had nothing to show for it.

On the other hand,

their manager was being driven around in a Rolls-Royce...

It was well-known that the Faces wanted to leave.

They were a very big group and they were not getting paid enough.

And they'd gone to a few managers,

and eventually they'd gone to Robert Stigwood...

Stigwood already had Eric Clapton and the Bee Gees on his books...

and Don wasn't about to let him steal his golden goose.

So he rounded up a couple of heavies and paid him a friendly visit...

My father went to his office and literally dangled him

out of the window.

And all I know is that my father came back

and roared with laughter...

It's the first time he'd ever been confronted by anything like me,

you know.

I'm sure he saw the humorous side of it afterwards.

Stigwood was totally shaken up - he was a friend of mine,

he told me the whole story and he was utterly shattered by it.

And damn it, two days later if there isn't a knock on the door

and the Small Faces walk into MY office.

Now, I don't want to be hung out the window.

But I like to confront things head-on,

so I picked up the phone to Don...

And I said to Don - "The Small Faces

"have just come into my office, and they obviously want to leave you.

"But I've got an idea - if they're going to leave you anyway,

"why don't I manage them and I'll split the commission with you 50-50?

"You do no work, you still get half the money."

"Oh, Simon, mate, that's fantastic, oh, what a geezer you are! Amazing!"

I said, "Well, hang on a minute,

"they haven't said they'll sign the contract yet."

"They will fucking sign it, I'll come round

"and break their legs right now!"

An aggressive management style like Don's is often effective,

but it can backfire, too.

As the '60s drew to a close, the most hyped new band in Britain

were Black Sabbath, a bunch of long-haired

kids from Birmingham playing a newer, heavier kind of music.

# Is he alive or dead

# Has he thoughts within his head? #

Every manager in the business wanted to sign them,

and they were duly summoned to Don Arden's office...

He says, "Come down to London."

We come out of Euston station, and there was this Rolls-Royce.

We'd never seen a Rolls-Royce before... We were like, "Whoa!"

-And he had his bodyguard/driver pick, pick you up.

-Yeah.

And he was like this bolshie...

And he had this big desk and it was like...

We were all thinking, "Wow". You know, it frightened us.

Obviously they were terrified of Don,

did not want him to manage them.

The bodyguard/driver that picked them up at Euston station

and then dropped them back became their manager.

They had supposedly said, "Well, Mr Arden's not interested

"but we are..." And they woofed the band.

You can imagine what my father did.

What would you say?

It was a feud between them, for years and years and years. Fist fights.

There was guns and all kinds of shit going on.

Oh, my God!

Fights in the casinos between the Meehans and the Ardens,

and settlements on yachts with people in fur coats...

and they were men.

And bodyguards with machine guns on the boat...

You know, all this silliness, right?

Arden is often painted as a ruthless villain,

but he's more complicated than that.

Think of him more as the King Lear of music management.

He built an empire, then bequeathed it to his daughter.

And it was this complex mix of family

and business that would be his undoing...

My father had a rule that he would never really put his name on paper.

In the early days it was my mother that was

the head of all his companies.

And my mother went bankrupt

so many times that she wasn't allowed any more to go bankrupt.

It's like, "No more!" So, he turned to me.

So then I became the person that signed all the contracts

and...you know...

Everything that went along with that.

When Arden eventually wrestled control of Black Sabbath

from his former chauffeur,

he put his daughter in charge of his investment.

And Sharon fell in love with it.

# We're going through changes... #

In 1982, when she and Ozzy tied

the knot in Hawaii, Don was there to give his daughter away -

probably the first time in his life he'd given anything away.

I honestly thought that my father,

when we got married, would say - "God bless you.

"Go. You're out of any contract with me. You're free.

"That's my gift to you."

No.

No, no, no, no, no... He did not want me to marry Ozzy.

At all. Because Ozzy was his cash cow at that time.

As his wife and manager, Sharon took control of Ozzy's career.

She promptly incurred her father's fury by taking Ozzy

away from Don's label.

Don sued her and began a family feud which was to last 15 years.

I can remember one night - we used to have a house not far from here.

He knew we had some cash - with Sharon.

He wanted the cash.

And she started screaming at him, throwing vases through

the windows at him, and money was coming out and floating like...

I threw it all in the fountain.

"You want the fucking money?

"Here's the money!"

It was like literally thousands of dollars fluttering down like conf...

Confetti! It was.

He's trying to grab this money.

He's trying to put it in his pockets!

Arden spent the '70s managing ELO, another huge act.

But that relationship came crashing down when the lead singer discovered

Arden had stolen 4 million from him in unpaid royalties.

As Don's empire crumbled,

he was able to pull one last escape trick...

Because the whole

caboodle belonged, on paper at least, to his only daughter.

And when the shit hit the fan, and all the money had gone, millions and

millions and millions of dollars had gone, everybody was coming after me!

And I ended up paying the tax bill!

-Yeah.

-Really?!

-Yeah!

-Yeah.

Arden's life story was part Shakespeare, part Sopranos.

His favourite saying was,

"Always fuck the artist before the artist can fuck you."

I mean, if he had been straight, he would have been a great manager.

-He'd have been the best!

-His track record was...

I mean, I don't know anybody else that had

so many big... I mean, not slightly successful - HUGE artists.

One after the other.

But he just couldn't be straight.

If Don Arden was the Godfather who stole from his bands, his protege

was someone who took elements of his style

but used them to a different end.

Peter Grant was a manager who, like Don,

was prepared to do whatever it took.

The difference was he cared passionately about his artists.

Peter got into management because he was a stagehand

at the Croydon Empire, and Don Arden noticed a minibus parked out back.

And made a few gruff enquiries, and discovered that this bus

belonged to this enormous guy - who was the stagehand - which was Peter.

And he said to Peter, "Would you drive

"Gene Vincent...for the next three weeks?"

And Peter said to me, "I knew it was iffy,

"because it was £50 a week

"and I had to pay the petrol myself..."

By 1967, Peter Grant was looking for a group to manage.

I gave him the Yardbirds, minus Jeff Beck but including Jimmy Page.

While I managed Jeff, Peter and Jimmy revamped the Yardbirds,

making them the biggest rock band of the '70s - Led Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin became very big, very quickly.

And a large part of that was down to Grant's managerial strategies...

I really had a huge respect for Peter.

He was a big guy!

You knew that he'd come from... He'd been a bouncer in his early days

and there was something rather kind of reptilian about him.

And you knew that this was somebody that you really actually

didn't want to mess with, but at the same time, Led Zeppelin

knew that they could put their full faith and trust in Peter.

So it released them to just look after the important stuff,

the music and the creative side.

# Greasy slicked-down body

# Groovy leather trim

# I like the way you hold the road

# Mama, it ain't no sin

# Talkin' 'bout love

# Talkin' 'bout love

# Talkin' about... #

I think that he was influenced by the Colonel Tom Parker

modus operandi with Elvis -

and that's that you make them accessible to the public

in a certain way, but cut off a lot of the otherwise-accepted avenues.

For example - TV... Peter was very reluctant to let the band

appear on television,

because he felt,

"Right, if you want to see Led Zeppelin, go and see them live."

You obviously have persevered with a positive line of not

appearing on television anywhere in the world, I believe.

Do you feel that television is too limited?

-Yes.

-In what area?

Well, particularly in sound.

With respect,

I don't think they have the facilities to record the sound,

and in some way, you just cannot capture the magic of Zeppelin.

# Been a long time since I rock and rolled

# It's been a long time since I... #

Led Zeppelin's dizzying success gave Peter Grant the most

important ingredient for a manger - leverage.

And he decided to

use its power to change the whole way the touring business was run...

# Lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely... #

A manager has to have an opinion.

There are too many managers, in my opinion,

that are very happy just to be there.

Peter had a deep, deep feeling in his gut

that the band were

the most important part of the whole...caboodle.

Yet the artists back then were being ripped off to a point that

was just shameful.

And he sort of took it upon himself,

and I'm sure that his size was a factor in this,

he took it upon himself that he was going to change that.

Promoters in those days - especially in America -

were often shady characters with links to organised crime.

The standard cut they offered the band from live shows

was 70% of the gate, sometimes even less.

Peter Grant told these people,

"If you want Zeppelin, you'll pay 90% or we don't play."

He had the balls and the body size to bully even the toughest of them.

And it's thanks to him that

the 90/10 split is still the industry standard today.

To handle a band like Zeppelin, and be that big in America,

you had to be tough, because you come across big-time promoters.

And he had a terrible reputation, Peter Grant, but he...

I think he had to have it!

You know, it's a hard game, and America,

when you're on the road in America,

it's a tough cookie, you have to have people watching

where all this money can disappear one way or another...

The Zeppelin documentary, The Song Remains The Same, captures

Grant at his intimidating best... confronting a promoter

when he gets wind that pirate photos are being sold inside the venue.

Don't fucking talk to me!

It's my bloody act - I'll leave you any time,

you couldn't even get them on the starting line!

How much kickback were you getting?

None! I knew nothing about it!

Oh, come on... You don't know... You're the fucking concession here,

-your mate's selling the T-shirts...

-He's the one that told Richard about it.

Once he'd gone on the scent of something...

You know, it was relentless.

Erm, and...

it didn't matter if it was over a fiver, he'd pursue it, you know.

You rented it and you control it,

it isn't selling fucking pirate posters.

You have to have someone else to tell you what it's doing...

It doesn't matter, as long as there's an extra nickel to be

drained by exploiting Led Zeppelin...it's great.

You've got to remember that The Song Remains The Same may show him

in a bad light, but he was the executive producer.

That's the light he wanted to be shown in.

You didn't see the really bad light.

He might have had a slightly different way of managing to other people,

but that's not the point. He did it for them.

And he protected them, to a great degree.

# Been dazed and confused for so long it's not true... #

Led Zeppelin's unstoppable journey would probably have continued

through the '80s if it weren't for the death of drummer John Bonham.

Aged just 32, he choked on his own vomit after

a lengthy drinking session, and the band called it a day.

Their so-called gangster manager retired quietly

and peacefully...

to Eastbourne,

where he lived another 15 years.

People often ask, was Peter Grant the next in line from Don Arden,

was he that sort of gangster?

Peter Grant was a very rough guy, and he hurt a lot of people

and he did some bad things.

But he was a very good manager.

He gave the group the correct percentage,

he only took the percentage which he'd agreed to take from them.

And when he was a thug, he was a thug on their behalf,

to further their career.

There was no thuggery between him and the group - they loved him.

All this business about violence and the rest of it, and drugs...

I'm not an apologist for Peter Grant,

but the person that I knew was not the person I read about.

I knew him for the last five years of his life.

He had changed completely.

Physically - he was down to, like, 16, 17st.

He'd given up drugs, which was principally cocaine.

He rings me up one day and says, "'Ere," he says,

"I've been asked to judge a talent contest on the pier."

He said, "Do you fancy doing it with me?"

So the next week - there are the managers of Led Zeppelin

and Dire Straits, judging a talent contest on Eastbourne pier.

And the bands were bloody dreadful. And he kept saying to me -

"They're fucking shit!"

I said, "We've got to make one of them the winner!"

And he said, "Oh, fucking hell, you pick one, they're fucking..."

In the mid-'70s, while Peter Grant and his ilk were still

storming around America playing rock in supersized stadiums,

the upcoming music scene suddenly went in a new direction - punk.

And one manager stood out above all others.

Malcolm McLaren's my hero.

Punk would never have happened without Malcolm.

There's this incredible myth that dominates the industry about me

as being this super, kind of Fagin-esque,

mythical, sort of...charlatan.

It's just nonsense.

It was all a posture, a posture that they actually believed!

Maybe I was just a fine actor?

But ultimately, one continually mismanaged things

because it just was more attractive to mismanage than manage!

# We're so pretty, oh, so pretty... #

Like Parnes and Epstein, McLaren had a shop.

But his shop was... well, slightly different.

Located on London's Kings Road, selling bondage gear,

it was simply called Sex.

You see, McLaren was an art-school prankster

who changed the face of both music

and fashion...

But strip away the PVC and safety pins, and the manager

he actually resembles most is that 1950s puppeteer, Larry Parnes.

A new Svengali was born...

Who was Svengali?

Sounds like some kind of Transylvanian count, doesn't he?

I know Malcolm wasn't Transylvanian

but he was approaching a count sometimes!

McLaren's posturing constantly blurred the line

between real and fake.

He even went as far as to make a "fictional documentary",

in which he played the manager of the Sex Pistols, who would create

outrage from nothing by writing fake letters to the music press...

"Dear Sounds, why do you devote

"so much space to the appalling Sex Pistols?

"You just have to look at their audience -

"I doubt if they've got one O Level between them."

Yeah, that's not bad, Soph.

But we've got to make fucking sure that we can

create enough stink to whip up real hatred before that record comes out.

# And we don't care. #

The music of punk rock was only one aspect, and for me,

not a major aspect.

It wasn't as if they were creating music that was that original.

It had an authenticity about it

because it seemed to be played by amateurs.

And I promoted the fact that it was better not to play,

than to be able to play.

It seemed cooler!

# Anarchy... #

One thing McLaren should be remembered for is

the effect of his management on an entire generation of kids.

In that respect he was easily the equal of someone like Brian Epstein.

The difference was the Pistols projected rage and hatred,

and McLaren was quick to capitalise on the chaos.

We played a gig, and a fight broke out in the audience.

There's nothing worse than a fight breaking out in the audience,

because nobody watches the band - they watch the fight.

So we're trying to stop it.

But somebody took a picture, and it looked like we're fighting

with the audience, and it was on the front page of the Melody Maker.

And once things like that start happening, you don't

have to call up the press. They call you.

McLaren was a brilliant opportunist. But was he a great manager?

He made the Sex Pistols public enemy number one,

and then threw them into the eye of the hurricane he'd created.

The band weren't protected. Or even paid.

# God save the Queen... #

We were very much in the public eye, and bombasted all across

papers like The Sun,

the Daily Mirror...

And yet no money in pocket.

And still squatting - at the time.

That was a real contradiction, and a hard one to tolerate.

You know, someone was lying to us...

I suppose the group themselves, the Sex Pistols, they kind of felt

they were being had, I suppose,

that they were being caught in this scam of mine.

And to some extent, that's probably true!

HE CHUCKLES

McLaren could be seen to represent the "manager as con artist" -

but it's worth noting that as well as conning the public,

and the Pistols, he conned himself.

After the group's demise, he was pretty much penniless.

But it was never about the money...

Be childish, be irresponsible and be everything this society hates.

And do it with as much style as possible.

And don't fear failure.

That was the real message.

That was the art.

Better to be a flamboyant failure

than any kind of benign success.

And the 1980s were all about success, benign or not.

A new generation of ambitious

and often flamboyant young people came bursting onto the scene.

Although I wasn't one of them, I'd been around the block

a couple of times, and I knew potential when I saw it.

With Wham! I took on a group who'd had two hit records.

The idea was, really,

to take them to be the very biggest group in the world.

So, how did we do that?

Well, sometimes being a manager is about lateral thinking.

We realised that if we could make Wham!

the first band ever to play in Communist China, then we'd get

so much press that it would break them right across the world.

And masterminding the whole thing is Simon Napier-Bell -

it was your idea in the first place, this, wasn't it?

I could see what was happening in China, they're genuinely opening up,

and they were aware that Western youth culture was going to come,

and I felt perhaps Wham! would be, for them, a way of doing it gently,

rather than plunging straight in with say, Boy George or something...

Western pop music had been banned in China for decades,

and I wasn't sure how the authorities were going to react to

two tanned and bouffant capitalist teenagers in leather jackets.

# Good guys... #

MUSIC TURNED OFF

They might take some convincing.

Then we supplied a video.

Video was very difficult indeed, because all their videos had

things which I felt would turn the Chinese off.

Lots of girls screaming, or lovemaking in Careless Whisper...

# Oh... #

So I came up with the idea of sending

them a live clip of Freedom - which is a great word in every language.

That seemed to go down well.

# I don't want your freedom

# I don't want to play around... #

After months of negotiations, I pulled off what I suppose is

the management coup of my career -

Wham! were invited to play in Communist China.

Once we were there, whipping up a media frenzy was the easiest

thing in the world - everybody was interested in the story.

There was just one small problem - nobody in China

had ever heard of Wham! or knew who Wham! were,

and so we decided to make a cassette to give away with the ticket.

And we got a top Mandarin singer

and recorded all of Wham!'s songs in Mandarin.

So that they would have on one side of the cassette Wham! songs

sung by Wham!, and on the other side sung in Chinese.

SHE SINGS IN MANDARIN: Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go

The people who came to concerts, were by

and large young people who worked on communal farms

outside of Beijing. They had behaved well or had good results from

their work, were given permission to buy tickets to go to this concert.

Most of the young people in China like pop music songs very much.

Once the music got going, it was, by Chinese standards,

an hour and a half of sheer exuberance.

Even a year ago, music like this in China was still being

denounced as "cultural pollution".

Today, disco is in.

As long, as officials say, as it's healthy, uplifting and vigorous.

I came here, in fact, to listen to the words.

I want to know the exact meaning of the singers.

But I can't hear.

The sound is very strong!

Pim-pom, pim-pom, pim-pom...

It was perfection, it was what we wanted. It was nonstop press.

It did everything we planned it to do.

And two weeks after Wham! had played in Beijing, I'd gone to LA.

They'd been on ABC, NBC and CBS news,

every hour on the hour for an entire week.

And I came through Immigration and they said, "What do you do?"

and I said ,"I manage Wham!" And the Immigration guy called his friends over

and said "Hey, this is the guy who manages Wham!

"You got any CDs and autographs...?" So, that's what had happened.

And that allowed us straightaway to start booking a stadium tour.

The '80s was a new era of stadium rock, with vast sums of money

at stake, corporate sponsorship, tax breaks and branding.

# I will follow... #

A successful band now had to operate more like a global corporation.

And that required a different kind of manager, someone who was

just as comfortable in the boardroom as the dressing room.

We would involve ourselves at executive level with,

you know, with...

the record company in each country where we were operating.

And if there was ever a territory that was sort of coming along more

slowly than the others, we would be annoyed about that

and we'd address it in a kind of military way and say,

"All right, everything's working in Europe except for Germany.

"Let's have another look at why we aren't big in Germany."

We went into Germany on repeated occasions,

and did German TV shows that were very big.

And we eventually cracked Germany as well.

When Paul McGuinness started managing U2 in 1978,

they were a bunch of teenagers who'd won an Irish talent contest.

But jump forward 33 years to 2011, and their 360 Degrees world tour

would gross a record-breaking 736 million.

MUSIC: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

# I have climbed the highest mountains

# I have run through the fields... #

So how did McGuinness turn them into such world-beaters?

Well, the list is impressive -

he renegotiated the band's contract to land them one of the best deals

in music history, he made sure that U2 owned the copyright

to their own material, he brokered one of the highest royalty rates

in the industry and he worked with Apple on U2-branded iPods.

We were determined from the outset that if we were going to be

good at the music, we were going to be good at the business as well.

And not get, not get taken, you know?

He took a band from zero...

to making them the biggest band in the world.

Reinvented the touring process... The "stadium rock show".

And I thought that was a masterstroke.

From four friends playing punk songs in a Dublin garage,

Paul McGuinness built U2 into a global brand.

They became big-time corporate players, with investment

portfolios and complicated offshore tax arrangements.

The music business of the '60s and '70s was like

the early days of the Gold Rush,

but this new professionalism has brought with it

a grown-up respectability.

They were pioneers.

Now, the business is certainly a lot more sensible,

a lot more stable, and again, more of a real business.

Look at the financial institutions

or banking... People take all those businesses really seriously.

This is the same. This is as demanding.

We might not wear a shirt and tie every day,

but otherwise it's a real business.

The knock-on effect of the industry "growing up" is that

rock management has become respectable.

Managing a major rock band is now seen as not much

different from managing any brand produced by any major corporation.

Universities will even give you a degree in it.

The most amazing question I ever got asked in a class -

a guy, he's maybe in his early 20s, he sticks his hand up

at the back and he says to me, he says, "Do you think

"the pension plan at Sony is better than the pension plan at Universal?"

For me, the biggest problem facing the music industry today

is the old-fashioned thinking of the record companies.

Management-wise, there's less of a problem.

New young managers are quickly adapting to new methods

and new tools.

# I tell the violin

# It's time to sink or swim

# Watch 'em play for ya... #

Scooter Braun is one of the new breed.

He discovered his biggest artist not like we used to, in a club,

but on YouTube.

And I clicked on it and it was a 12-year-old boy.

And this little kid had such soul, I just had to find him.

And I said, "There's no-one in the marketplace who has a young,

"angelic voice but singing great love songs that make you

"believe in love before you became a jaded adult.

"And there's a need for that again."

I googled the background of the banners on the back

of the stage where he was singing - he was singing in a small church in his town

and the banners in the church were a local business.

And I found this local business, and I called the school board,

I called everyone, until his mother finally called me back.

And I put them on the first plane either of them had ever been on.

And I've been with Justin ever since.

What singles Scooter out as a manager was what he did next.

Rather than go to a label with his precious find,

he continued to develop Bieber as an artist on YouTube.

To bring any kind of numbers up digitally,

you need to remember what you are dealing with, which is a phone.

You don't make content to reach millions and millions of people,

you make content to move one person in an intimate setting.

My philosophy was, "Let's make great stuff, put it up."

I never let him once say, "My name is Justin Bieber and I'm singing..."

Everything was - the video starts, I kept it really raw,

and he would just sing.

# Forever I believe my work is done... #

And it gave you this feeling of, "Like, who's posting this?

"Where is this coming from? Oh, this is special.

"This is actually...

"Wow, he's really talented. I'm going to show my friends..."

It was actually when we filmed With You - that one was the first

one to reach a million,

and then people went back in the catalogue and started watching

all the others and they started to explode and explode and explode.

# Tell me you need me

# When you call me on the phone... #

At the time, no-one signed acts off YouTube,

and no-one cared about YouTube hits...

To now see it become the status quo of how A&Rs decide

if someone has popularity...

is very flattering in a way, and also funny,

because literally I was told I was crazy, at the time.

After 60 million views on YouTube,

a record deal was pretty much inevitable,

and Justin Bieber is now one of the world's top-selling artists.

But getting Bieber, Ariana Grande and the other artists

in Braun's stable to the top of the charts just isn't enough any more.

In an age of dwindling record sales,

managers have to think beyond the music...

Sometimes royalties aren't enough any more, because the sales aren't

what they used to be, so you create fragrances and you do create,

you know, drinks, or

you create merchandising products, and consumer products, and apps,

and all these different things that create different revenue streams...

And the whole point of that is, your artist is financially

free enough to concentrate on their art with no distractions.

So, perfume sales equals artistic freedom.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it.

It's easy to call this "selling out",

but in truth I'm glad that today's young managers are so sussed.

If guys like Scooter Braun weren't

capitalising on branding opportunities,

then Brian Epstein's merchandise mistakes were all for nothing.

# Hello from the other side... #

However, there are other ways of looking at it.

Jonathan Dickins discovered Adele at an open-mic night.

Today, he's a man who says no far more often than he says yes.

I've never really chased the money first.

And a lot of people say they never really chase the money,

and most people do.

And the biggest thing of that is when you have success.

When the money really starts to be significant.

Opportunity, to Adele, presents itself by the truckload every day.

Any and every opportunity to make money in "non-traditional" or

"branding" exercises - we've been offered it.

Everything. Clothing ranges, perfumes, nail polishes...

It goes on.

For us, the first thought isn't the branding opportunity.

It's the music.

And I want to protect what it is we do with her music and her content.

Absolutely I do. And that will never change.

But this isn't just about branding.

For many in the jaded music industry today, doom is in the air.

The industry is apparently on its knees.

But for the young managers who are coming along,

the new world order is a wide-open door of opportunity.

It's evolving.

And that's an exciting thing, because

when something's changing there's an opportunity for something new.

We're in the Wild, Wild West. There are no rules.

That's really exciting for an entrepreneur, and it's also

exciting for musicians, cos there are no lines.

You can write the rules every single day you get up.

# We could have had it all

# Rolling in the deep... #

I think you have to embrace how things change.

All this stuck in the past or "That's not how it used to be..."

I mean, she might as well die, then.

# To the beat... #

It's the music business. There's no rules. Nobody knows everything.

Anyone who thinks they know everything is an idiot.

And the music business, if it has to do one thing -

please don't be fucking generic.

# Take your picture, cameraman

# Can you tell me who I am? #

So here we are - back where we began, just like the '60s,

where no-one knows quite what comes next,

and things have to be made up as we go along.

Nowadays, the manager also has to look after the "brand",

though perhaps that's what we always did, just called it by another name.

We still have to be the same mix of therapist,

friend and sometimes parent.

And of course, we still have to make sure the artist is given the freedom

to do what they do best - make music.

# It's only me... #

I think the way I hear music is the way most people hear music.

So I think - if I have a reaction, why wouldn't they?

I'm not special.

So what my talent is -

literally not being special...

INTERVIEWER CHUCKLES

I deal with special people. I manage special people.

And the way I help them most is translating to them

how "not special" people might react to them!

LAUGHTER

# Do you wanna be a star?

# Do you wanna be a star? #

Um...

BACKGROUND CLATTER

-Interrupt the interview. >

-Oh, God!

Cameras, cameras...

Oh, God!

All right, let me quickly just tell him what he needs to do...

-Over there?

-We'll jump right back into it.

# Do you wanna be a star?

# You are, you are

# Superstar

# You are, you are

# Superstar. #