Myth Makers Music Moguls: Masters of Pop

This programme contains some strong language.

If you want to see a legend in action,

there's no better place to start

than here.

DISTORTION

MUSIC PLAYS: Wild Thing by Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was a star in Britain,

but in the US he still needed to make a mark.

# Wild thing... #

It's no good being the greatest guitarist in the world

if nobody knows your name,

what you look like or what you do.

And that's where PR comes in.

# You move me, look out... #

So when Jimi set fire to his guitar, it looked like a spontaneous

act by a great performer.

But it wasn't.

This was a PR stunt,

pure and simple,

and it broke Jimi in America.

I'm Alan Edwards, and I'm a PR,

and I can tell you this was one of the great PR stunts of all time.

MUSIC: Kashmir by Led Zeppelin

PR is the unseen hand behind the most successful musical

acts in the world.

You see, you can have a hit record without PR,

but you can't sustain a career without it.

And if it does its job well,

it's invisible.

PR stands for...

Er...

PR is very important, you know...

Otherwise you're the best kept secret, aren't you, you know?

I suppose it's getting what you've got to other people to know that

they didn't know that what you've

got is what they really needed all along.

All publicity is good publicity, even when it's bad.

And yet to some, PR remains

a dark force that controls and manipulates.

Hard to believe, I know.

PR is twisting minds, you know,

making something seem very obvious

and, you know, irresistible.

PR is essentially telling lies for a living.

But the things that last

are worth having lies told about in the first place.

The dictionary definition of PR is to promote a favourable public

image of somebody and that's what I do

and that's what any decent PR does.

Lying doesn't come into it.

So in this film, I'm going to lift the lid on the world of PR.

I'm going to show you the inner machinations, how it really works.

I'm going to also show you the extraordinary effect and impact

that it's had on the music business

and, of course, the world at large.

'Being a PR today is a bit like being a conductor.

'You've still got the old media of TV, radio and newspapers.

'And all this remains crucial to any artist today.'

Great, and I think the Guardian want to review the gig next week,

so it's all really shaping up...

'But we now also have new technology -

'Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram,

'Snapchat, Facebook, etc,

'so you can connect with an audience of millions instantaneously.'

Taylor Swift and her team, who we are going to look at later,

are modern masters of PR,

using a well-coordinated combination of old and new media.

But at the end of the day,

even their PR relies on the narrative

and, importantly, the talent.

MUSIC: Blank Space by Taylor Swift

# No money, suit and tie

# I can read you like a magazine...#

It doesn't matter if it's old media or new media or this media or

that media, you've got to get that story right.

It's about telling the story and placing it.

Well, this girl is great. You know,

she's got long blonde hair and gorgeous eyes...

And today is no different to the '60s,

when Britain's PR story begins.

Now look up.

Then position down like that.

For an up and coming artist, the PR's job is

to get the artist out there

and talked about.

Hey, listen, also can you suggest her

to your Radio Luxembourg DJs and things?

On the nationals, if I was you, I'd play up the sex angle a bit

and get her doing some of these fashion pages.

In these early days, PR was all about making your artist

attractive and marketable.

Look at The Beatles -

nice, clean-cut boys, smart enough to meet the Prime Minister.

But the flip side to the safe image was to be raw,

edgy and a bit dangerous.

And if you're going to be dangerous,

you might as well do it on a brand new BBC series.

This week on Scene, we intend to look closely at a group through

the eyes of its leader,

so who better to start with, then, than Pete Townshend of The Who?

My personal motivation on stage is quite simple.

It consists of a hate of every kind of pop music

and a hate of everything our group has done, really.

The fact is that our group hasn't got any quality.

It's just musical sensationalism.

You have to resign yourself to the fact that a large

part of the audience is sort of thick, you know,

and don't appreciate quality.

I didn't care about the fans,

I cared about the...the PR.

I just wanted to be on the TV, you know?

And also that was probably quite calculated.

Most artists were coached by their managers or their PR people

what to say, how to behave, what to wear.

What was happening to me is I had one of our managers,

Chris Stamp, wheeling me in, kind of going,

"Create trouble, Pete."

What about musical quality, though? You said that you don't

think your group have got any.

Well, why don't you try to give it some?

Because we don't particularly want to give it quality.

We've tried and it's failed so miserably, you know, really.

LAUGHTER

No, really, this is the truth, you know.

Pete delighted in being controversial cos he understood

the value of controversy,

and he took that on as being his job.

I've heard a lot about you and the rest of the group taking drugs,

Pete. Does this mean you're usually

blocked up when you're actually on stage?

No, but it means we're blocked up all the time, you know.

LAUGHTER

He was telling the truth.

But Pete saying that would have been

horror to parents sitting at home watching the show,

if they were. But any youngsters watching it would

have gone, "Wow, yeah, this is our band," cos they were all

probably getting blocked-up every Friday night themselves.

MUSIC: My Generation by The Who

# People try to put us down Just because we get around... #

Pete certainly ruffled a few feathers and many were

shocked about him openly discussing drugs

and the band's musical ability.

# Talkin' bout my generation

# I hope I die before I get old... #

But in PR terms, it did something much more important.

It sold The Who to its target audience.

He's a narrator, he's a politician, a subversive, he's everything.

So, instead of looking at him as being

a PR man's disaster,

he's a PR man's present.

He's a gift, cos he's always going to create press.

Controversy sells and the press loved it.

PRs would use this tactic for years to come.

After all, where would the Sex Pistols,

Madonna or Oasis be without

a reputation for stirring it up?

# Talkin' bout my generation

# It's my generation... #

But even in these early days, when PR was still in its infancy,

there was a suspicion that it wasn't to be entirely trusted.

In my early day, there was a hostility towards PR.

You went to journalist college, and you were told, in no uncertain

terms, "PRs will try to exploit you.

"Your job is to be a journalist,

"to be independent, to expose people,

"not to make friends with PRs."

# We're not gonna take it... #

However, although national newspapers

played a role in getting artists known,

at that time it was the music press you really had to crack.

# We're not gonna take it... #

The NME, Melody Maker and others held a lot of clout.

And one journalist-turned-PR knew more than most how the game worked.

His name was Keith Altham.

A lot of artists would ring me up

and say, "We hear you're doing PR. Would you do our PR?"

And I'd say, "No, no. Dreadful people, PRs.

"I don't want to do PR. I'm just helping out a friend, you know?"

And then I began adding up the money I was turning down,

realised it was a bit of a mistake to keep turning it down.

So who was the PR we met at the beginning

who suggested that Jimi Hendrix burn his guitar?

Oh, it was me.

Erm, but that was the kind of thing you needed to do

to just get the wider attention, you know,

and make big bucks and be a huge star.

Keith Altham was to become my boss, and he knew that

when it comes to PR, image is crucial.

Image sold Jimi Hendrix and it would go on to sell a thousand

bands that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

MUSIC: Mama Weer All Crazee Now by Slade

One of Keith's early clients was Ambrose Slade.

# I said my mama we're all crazy now... #

Now we all know them simply as Slade,

the genial glam rockers that helped brighten up the '70s.

But they didn't start out that way.

This is the rather less flamboyant band in 1969.

Well, it was difficult in the late '60s.

We were pretty much looking

like every other band that was around at the time.

We started off with a sort of mod look,

but it wasn't getting us noticed at all.

And Chas Chandler, our manager, said,

"We need to find a new image for you

"to set you aside from anybody else

"and we need a PR guy to handle all this."

And he knew this fella called Keith Altham.

"Well," I said, "You need something

"that's in the papers, that's current,

"and the big news at the moment is skinheads."

I says, "Pity that you can't make them the first skinhead group."

Course that was like a light going off in Chas's head - DING!

The light shone.

He thought, "That's a brilliant idea."

The next day, Chas had sent us down to

the hairdressers, had all our hair cropped,

and so we went and got all the gear.

When we got back to the office, I phoned up and says,

"You can't do it. They're not yobs,

"they're not oiks, they'll get found out,

"and they'll hate me for it."

And Chas said, "Too late. They're already at the hairdressers

"now, they've already had their hairs cut."

Even though the band's music wasn't that aggressive -

I mean, I don't know personally of too many skinhead violinists -

associating the band with skinheads

was a risky PR move that almost backfired.

# Remember me after my love... #

A lot of people looked at us and thought we were heavy duty.

Promoters were scared of booking us,

radio shows were frightened of playing our records and it was

purely a lot of it down to the image.

But it was a PR exercise that really worked,

because overnight there was no other

band at that time with a skinhead look.

# Brother John and Sister Susie say that I've been bad... #

It got them attention and it got them in the papers.

Nobody cared about them before.

And Noddy always says that it was

the beginning of Slade before they had a hit.

# Don't think I'll stick around here I ain't a-lookin' for a fight... #

Creating an image is one of the tools of the PR's trade.

But if you want to make a big splash, then you need a PR stunt.

Now, this might be a giant statue of Michael Jackson

floating down the Thames

or the KLF burning a million quid in a field,

or it could be an over-the-top, James Bond-style press event.

MUSIC: The Wizard by Uriah Heep

Heavy rockers Uriah Heep were a nice bunch of lads,

but despite selling albums by the truckload,

and being worshiped by their fans, the press hated them.

-The most famous one is Melissa Mills.

-Yeah, yeah.

She reviewed our first album in Rolling Stone and she said,

maybe not verbatim, she said, "If this band ever makes it,

"I'll commit suicide."

# Well, we know the joy of life... #

Bit harsh, Melissa!

But that is exactly the sort of thing you are up against

when you have to promote an artist without the critics' support.

And in 1976, Uriah Heep had a new album to sell.

The album was called High And Mighty,

and the picture shows a gun flying up through the sky. Anyway,

we sat down one day, my boss Keith Altham at the time,

and we decided High And Mighty - duh -

we should do it on a mountain!

And one of us had seen a rerun of a Bond film, which had a scene in a

wonderful revolving restaurant on top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps.

So that's when the lunacy started.

And they came up with this magnificent

idea of spending our money flying a bunch of people to Switzerland.

Well, as usual, we didn't think it was our money,

but it ended up to be our money.

Nobody bothered to tell us it was our money.

We took a party out to the mountain with Alan Freeman, the DJ,

the national newspaper journalist,

and it was unbelievable!

We got on a plane to fly to Switzerland...

A chartered plane.

And every press person was given a headset with the album on.

All good so far, and a free bar!

Not so good in the end.

And they drank their way to Switzerland,

listening to the album, you know.

How many of the journalists bothered

to switch on their in-flight systems, who can tell. There'd been

many cans of lager consumed at Gatwick airport and on the plane.

We got to the airport in Switzerland and the drummer, Lee Kerslake,

was a little tired and emotional when we arrived,

because he sighted this guy dressed an eight-foot bear,

because that was the national emblem of Switzerland.

They'd come to make us welcome.

Being Lee, he starts to wrestle with it.

But it's a man inside a costume!

So god knows what this man thought!

And they're rolling around on the floor in the airport,

and the chap dressed as a bear doesn't think it's very funny.

So the guy there was amazing, amazing,

-very funny!

-That's what makes me

think we landed in Austria and drove to Switzerland.

Oh, we could have done, mate!

We went on from there to the longest cable car

ride in the world up to the mountains, like James Bond.

The lift attendant, he says, "I would like to warn you that one

"drink down here is like five up there!"

And of course, they've had about ten each.

We got to this revolving restaurant at the top of this mountain,

and so we all sat around for this sumptuous banquet, and it was

three, four, five courses, it went on for hours and hours and hours,

the food, the drinks, and some journalists just couldn't hack it.

Somebody was saying, "Anybody seen Alan Freeman?"

"No... Is he still in the restaurant?"

We were outside doing photographs.

Oh, yeah, there he goes!

He'd fallen asleep in his soup!

He was going round the revolving restaurant like a ride!

Anyway, the penultimate moment was going to be the photo call.

And we'd choreographed it so we'd have Ken Hensley, Mick Box,

the band, with the Swiss Alps behind them.

I mean, what could put over

the image of an album called High and Mighty better?

What we hadn't taken to account is that relations

between some of the members of the group were not perfect.

And just as the photographers lined up,

a scuffle broke out between the group.

Within minutes, it seemed like a

full armed fist fight, people flying here, there and the other!

So the photographers were complaining to me

and they were saying,

"Oh, this is no good, mate! I wanted..."

You know, "They're not standing together!

"Why are they punching each other?

"That's not what we signed up for at all!"

You could sum it up by calling it an adventure that descended very

rapidly into farce.

Oh, god. Those were the days.

No, they weren't.

Public relations?

To me, it means, erm...

If it's done right it's fantastic.

If it's done wrong it's High and Mighty.

In the case of High and Mighty it means pure rubbish!

So there was nothing to do but get everyone back to London.

And, of course, I had to drown everyone's sorrows and take their

mind off the incident,

but amazingly the album got loads of good reviews.

By the mid-'70s, even bad publicity was proven to be

good PR and in 1976, the same year as High And Mighty came out,

an exciting new musical movement emerged that was tailor-made

to turn bad publicity into great stories.

MUSIC: Anarchy In The UK by The Sex Pistols

# I am an antichrist

# And I am an anarchist... #

Are you against the Stones and The Who, sounds like that?

Yes, of course, because they're established.

They just do not mean anything to anyone.

But what the punk years did give would-be PRs was the chance to

learn on the job and often the hard way.

There was always somebody getting arrested,

the police were cancelling a gig, there was a fight going on.

There was a crisis every day.

How these scenarios were handled became

a blueprint for the future of the PR industry.

One of my clients at this time was a band called The Stranglers.

MUSIC: Hanging Around by The Stranglers

# Big girl in the red dress

# She's just trying to impress us

# And she's got the barley fever

# But she doesn't make a sound

# She's just hanging around... #

My analysis of The Stranglers pretty quick

was that they had really, really good songs

and they were a real quality live act.

So I sat down and devised this plan.

# Christ he told his mother

# Christ he told her not to bother... #

I mean, as a PR, you don't invent a band.

But you do help them capitalise on what's going on around.

And the punk image was pushed hard.

# Hanging around

# He's just hanging around... #

At the time, there was definitely an open door,

which Alan saw, and the door

said, "Come in here if you are punk."

And, er, he saw on the other side of this door great riches

and great fortune and recording contracts

and money to be made by managers, PR people,

and hopefully musicians.

# Didn't have the money round to buy a Morry Thou... #

So Alan steered us through that door

by manufacturing stories that

played up to an image of punk.

# But the money's no good

# Just get a grip on yourself

# And you should know... #

Alan kind of encouraged us

to provoke people

just to be provocative.

Why don't you want to stay in our movie?

Eh?

We want only your statement.

Why you don't want to stay in our movie?

Cos I'm no prostitute.

I'm not adverse to a bit of confrontation,

but we did have a motto in the Stranglers at one point.

Truth through provocation.

And you hate Germans, you say?

The majority, yeah.

And then, you know, we started attracting a certain crowd

and bands were getting pretty tribal then

so our bunch of followers kind of wanted to

annoy other bands and their audiences

and so we got a reputation there as well.

People would be sent to hospital, we'd have blood all over us

Alan would say, "Fucking great copy!"

And he'd make something out of it.

Every time they did a gig, it was a self-perpetuating process

because the more they were associated with punk,

then the more you'd have some element

of yobby kids turning up and you'd

have a little scuffle in the audience.

I would then fan those flames.

I would probably add a nought to whatever happened.

So if an incident happened and two policemen turned up,

it would be three squad cars turned up with dogs, so...

And we would, we would supply him with little pieces

of stories which he would then, erm, magnify

and glorify and sell to the papers.

And the papers would completely eat it up

and loved it, loved every second of it.

I think he oiled what was already there.

What The Stranglers were capable of doing

made Alan Edwards' job really easy.

Alan didn't have to fabricate anything.

Yeah, this is fucking boring. You lot are a load of the most boring

people I've ever seen in my fucking life.

Have you all got your Crackerjack pencils?

Well, stick 'em up your arses, then!

Good PR does not reveal its own hand.

Good PR is disguised as

though it were simply news or a feature.

And in that very important respect it's

different from conventional advertising.

PR comes in pretending to be the work of a journalist

and therefore the consumer isn't alerted

and is therefore more likely to be manipulated by it.

We hate playing to elitist audiences so fuck off!

MUSIC: Something Better Change by The Stranglers

# Something better change

# I said something better change... #

The music papers lapped up every punk story they could,

but with the help of PR,

punk also became regular fodder for the national press.

# Something better change... #

And by the '80s, it wasn't just punk that had gone mainstream.

Music entertainment was now part of all of our lives.

For better or for worse,

this was the beginning of a revolution in the media,

with MTV as a noisy new arrival.

You know, Madonna started her career

at the advent of video and Madonna's probably...

Her and Michael Jackson are probably

the most famous people that benefited from MTV.

MUSIC: Thriller by Michael Jackson

# It's close to midnight

# Something evil's lurking in the dark... #

So from the PR point of view, this was a golden age.

MTV put the spotlight on pop music and the release of a new

video for an artist like Michael Jackson became an event in itself.

And of course, the print media and PR responded.

Pop stars were great copy.

My sense was that music was so important to people that they

would read it, even in a national newspaper.

You read about somebody famous,

instantly, even if it comes to polishing their shoes, only every

third day, and never on a Wednesday,

for some reason somebody will say,

"Do you know what? It's bloody interesting. This bloke

"doesn't polish his shoes on Wednesdays!"

# Cos this is thriller Thriller night... #

Kelvin MacKenzie, seeing the future, commissioned a new entertainment

page in The Sun.

It was called Bizarre and it was edited by John Blake.

Bizarre was to radically change the PR landscape for both

the music industry and far beyond.

I think the game changed

because the music press just wrote to people who bought records.

I was writing to people with a much bigger agenda

and people who didn't buy records were still

fascinated by the cultural importance of people like

Steve Strange and Duran Duran.

MUSIC: Is There Something I Should Know? by Duran Duran

# Please, please tell me now... #

What this meant for music PRs was that we now had direct access

to a huge new audience.

You know, I had to do this column six days a week

and I had to find 12, 13 stories a day as well as doing feature

interviews, as well as doing news stories.

So it's a lot of filling up so you

came to rely on PR. And they would feed me

stories because they understood my problems and we worked together.

The PRs know that almost anything could go in,

and any kind of rubbish anybody wanted to say.

# I know you're watching me every minute of the day, yeah... #

On reflection, it never occurred

to me at the time that this was

going to be a kind of torrent of PR.

And the success of the Bizarre

column encouraged others to follow suit,

most notably the Mirror's 3am Girls.

I think celebrity reporting has become particularly

manipulative not just in the music industry.

The reporters don't know what's going on,

so they rely to an alarming

extent on stuff being fed to them, little titbits from the PR people.

And the other thing is that their need to get access to those

celebrities is so great that they accept all

sorts of restrictions on the way they do their writing.

What a PR did in the music business in the '80s

is as appropriate to every industry today.

They learned a lot there.

The PR ideas which were polished in the music business

and created great stars and great wealth.

This is about wealth-creation.

Of course, PR is not always about boosting a star's profile

or their wealth. It's sometimes necessary to

protect their image -

crisis management, we call it.

And most stars need it at one time or another.

MUSIC: Let's Stick Together by Roxy Music

-REPORTER:

-The American model Jerry Hall

has appeared in court in Barbados

charged with trying to smuggle drugs.

The glamorous Jerry Hall was the girlfriend of the equally

glamorous Mick Jagger from the Rolling Stones.

You can't imagine a bigger story.

What apparently happened was

that Jerry Hall went to the airport and says,

"Has a box arrived for me?"

So there was a big old cardboard box going round

and round on the baggage belt, and the customs man said,

"Oh, could that box... Could that be yours?"

And she said, "It might be."

And he said, "Well, have a look."

I opened it up and inside was all these plastic packages and one

of them was torn open and there were

leaves and seeds and things sticking out.

And so the customs man said,

"You are arrested for smuggling cannabis," and she said,

"What? You just told me to open it!"

This is not my bag.

This is not my stuff.

You know, these things are sent to try us

and I just hope we can sort it out.

I was charged with getting

together a pack of Fleet Street's finest and getting out there to lend

moral support and practical support. Probably about 25,

30 journalists, we flew out.

There was no shortage of takers, by the way,

in snow-bound London in January,

to go out on a trip to Barbados.

So we had a plane full of what you would call hacks.

# Whoa, I'm going to Barbados... #

I mean, poor Alan being sort of parachuted into Barbados

and expecting us to behave as if we were in London.

Well, that wasn't going to happen.

The courtroom was in a sleepy little town called Worthing,

which was about five miles out of Bridgetown,

and it was like something out of a beautiful old colonial film.

It was a small courtroom, oak panelled,

with a fan whirring gently.

The judge was about 100 years old,

had a wig and he... I'm sure he did go back to colonial times.

And Alan Edwards was there stage managing it all.

He got us totally onside.

And he made sure Jagger was nice to everybody, you know.

The last thing he wanted was the press turning against Jerry or

saying it might be true.

So right from the start we treated it as a preposterous

miscarriage of justice.

It never made sense that

she would bring in this bit of marijuana

into Barbados when really, if she wanted a joint, she could get it.

There, there was a semi-colonial attitude

but that was the way the world was then, you know.

This is this dark country far away and these wicked people have

taken our lovely, pouting, gorgeous Jerry Hall.

MUSIC: We Can Dance If We Want To by Men Without Hats

# We can dance if we want to

# We can leave your friends behind

# Cos if friends don't dance

# And if they don't dance

# Well they're no friends of mine... #

Well, my role was to encourage the headlines, to slightly

ridicule the proceedings. It was like a Carry On court case,

but my job was to fan those flames,

and the more the headlines were lurid,

the better from my point of view, cos we didn't want

this to seem like a serious case and, frankly, it wasn't.

They were all full of things like,

"Jerry Hall incarcerated in hell hole."

The judge said, "This court case is not going to carry

"on with this kind of reporting.

"It's a disgrace. You've got to wait until the verdict is reached,"

and, of course, the journalists paid no attention whatsoever.

The covers carried on relentlessly

for about a week of what a disgraceful

thing this was and how Jerry Hall should be immediately released.

I think from the judge's point of view, you might call it

trial by media.

I just say media reporting how ridiculous the situation was.

I hear what you're staying, trial by media,

but we were just reporting the news.

I remember one day the judge said, "Bring me the exhibit!"

And he sort of banged something,

and this old soldier came up from the back of the courtroom

in khaki, stumbling, carrying this massive box of marijuana.

Now, being a cardboard box, of course,

bits were, you know, coming off and breaking,

there was bits of grass falling all over the courtroom

floor as he staggered up the aisle towards the judge.

The British journalists, of course,

were bending over, grabbing handfuls, putting them

in their pockets. It was uproar in the court courtroom...

No, no, no.

That's bloody Alan making stuff up again.

I can't remember if they brought the marijuana into the court.

I think they must have done. Look, the whole island smelt of marijuana

anyway, so they probably did bring it into the courtroom, yeah.

What was left of it.

The judge was banging his... "Stop proceedings! This is a disgrace!

"Outrage in my court!" And he stopped the trial.

But actually he didn't seem to be bothered that the

journalists had all got packets. You know, grass, handfuls of dope

and stuff. What he was worried about was the prejudicial reporting that

was going on. He'd obviously just been handed the

papers from London, and I think maybe that did undermine the case.

And the whole case collapsed,

as did the cardboard box with the grass in it.

Jerry, Jerry, how do you feel?

Very relieved.

The Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger brand was sort of enhanced afterwards,

yes, and the great thing was that Mick had dropped everything to come

and sort of come and save his damsel in distress,

so that was that was... That played well certainly to my newspaper,

the Daily Mail, which you know, is generally a woman's paper.

This knight of rock coming to save his girl.

That was really cool.

There is no such thing,

short of being a paedophile,

as bad publicity.

It's an extraordinarily powerful aspect of life.

I always say to everybody -

and I get calls off people who are up to their necks -

I say, "Forget about it.

"First of all, the dogs bark, but the caravan moves on."

PR in the UK had gone from being a caravan to a massive great

juggernaut, thundering down the middle of the central reservation.

MUSIC: Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana

There was an invisible moment a decade or two ago where the

number of journalists in decline was crossed

and overtaken by the number of PR people, so news organisations

are therefore enormously vulnerable to having PR people

decide what stories they cover and

with what angles and what pictures and what quotes.

If the '80s were the golden age, the '90s were when PR went platinum.

Spin became the buzz word.

# Hello, hello, hello, how low... #

And in the music industry it was PR,

combined with the best of British talent, that was to put

the UK music scene back on the map.

# With the lights out

# It's less dangerous

# Here we are now

# Entertain us... #

The early '90s were dominated by American rock music.

Dominated by the Seattle sound, dominated by grunge.

What happened was, sadly, Kurt Cobain died,

and when Kurt Cobain died it created a vacuum.

And into that vacuum came British artists.

British artists that were fed up

with the dominance of American artists.

And the first of those bands was Suede.

MUSIC: Animal Nitrate by Suede

# Like his dad you know that he's had

# Animal nitrate in mind... #

I sort of wanted to sing about things that

weren't allowed in the charts, conventionally.

I wanted to sing about sex and violence and all these

things, but not in a kind of Hollywood way,

in a real kind of kitchen sink way.

And to sort of mould those into the shape of a pop song.

# Oh, what turns you on... #

When Suede came along, they completely blew me away.

I thought they were, like, the most incredible

sexy, cocky band I had seen in years.

I decided that we had to put

a team around the band before we put the first single out.

One of the team was PR man Phil Savidge.

His job was to get a buzz going around the band.

The most straightforward way in which PR operates

is they write press releases, and a good press release

looks like a news story. It'll have a headline and an intro and quotes

from the key people.

And that arrives in the news room, a nicely packaged

little story, with a ribbon around it, so to speak.

I'd write things like, "Suede - the best band in the world,"

with an asterix above it

and then people would look at the bottom of the press release

and at the asterix which was next to

it at the bottom and it would say, "True."

I wanted to write something that nobody could ignore.

The point of pop music is that you attract attention.

Don't ever believe any pop musician

that says they don't want to attract attention

because it's why you're on the stage.

I used to build them up to be this thing that no band could possibly

be, and it felt like a game as well, that journalists knew that.

This was a band that was needed by the British music press, and the

PR person behind Suede understood that, understood it fantastically.

The noise created by the band and its PR

gave Suede a front cover that most bands can only pray for.

The Best New Band In Britain.

What was so remarkable was that this

was before the band had released any music at all.

As soon as that front cover happened,

then everything just fell into place,

as long as the records were good, which they were.

And when they emerged, the whole thing just blew up.

MUSIC: Metal Mickey by Suede

I call this perpetual motion.

It's the PR's job to keep the band constantly in the news

and constantly on the front covers.

# Well, she's show showing it off then... #

I think by the time they got the NME cover, the industry was

talking about the band, all of the gigs were selling out,

they were building up a fan base,

Suedemania, really, was what was going on.

# She sells hearts... #

So now everyone's talking Suede.

Great.

But what the PR now needs to do is to keep them

visibly at the top, by whatever means necessary.

Before the first album came out, we've got 18 front covers.

It came to a point where we wouldn't let Brett speak to a newspaper

or a magazine unless it was a front cover. It got, you know, ridiculous.

So ridiculous that some complained

that the band were just a product of PR hype.

# She sells hearts... #

Hype would have got Suede one front cover.

It wouldn't have got them 18.

It was an unbelievable combination of talent, PR, and timing.

# She's driving me mad

# Oh, she... #

When the album was released, it was the fastest selling debut

album in British musical history.

With Suede as the inspiring pioneers,

grunge had been kicked off the map by a new movement.

Britpop.

MUSIC: Common People by Pulp

# She came from Greece She had a thirst for knowledge... #

Britpop was a particularly British media creation,

which included everyone from Suede to Pulp and Blur

to the Cain and Abel of British rock,

the Gallagher brothers with their band, Oasis.

I got caught shoplifting in that Co-op back there...

With them came the perfect storm of politics, music and PR.

MUSIC: Roll With It by Oasis

It's the 19th February, 1996,

and the annual Brit Awards are in full flow.

And the rather surprising guest of honour

was the Prime Minister in waiting,

Tony Blair.

# You gotta roll with it

# You gotta take your time

# You gotta say what you say don't let anybody get in your way... #

It's been a great year for British music.

British music back once again

in its rightful place at the top of the world.

The evening belonged, however, to Oasis.

# I think I've got a feeling I'm lost inside... #

In 1996, Oasis were at an absolute zenith.

People forget how big that band were.

So by the time of the Brit Awards, they were front and centre.

MUSIC: Live Forever by Oasis

Indeed they were and they swept the board, winning three awards.

Their swagger suggested they'd been enjoying their evening.

# Maybe I don't really wanna know... #

I mean, the Oasis table were, like,

to a man, were on ecstasy,

so Noel was out of his mind, do you know what I mean, you know?

They were just, like, gone.

And it was in this state that Noel gave one of the most

surprising speeches in the history of music.

Oi!

There are seven people in this room tonight who are giving a little

bit of hope to young people in this country.

That is me, our kid, Bonehead,

Guigsy, Alan White, Alan McGee

and Tony Blair.

And if you've all got anything about you, you'll go up there

and you'll shake Tony Blair's hand, man. He's the man!

Power to the people!

I mean, it was, like, kind of a ridiculous statement

but, I mean, it was like... But I mean, when you're on ecstasy,

you make ridiculous statements.

He just happened to make it in front

of, like, 100 million people watching it.

Being endorsed by Noel Gallagher in that environment

was an absolute...

What's the word I'm looking for?

PR godsend?

Perfect. You should do PR.

The endorsement of the Labour Party by Oasis

in particular, was big, do you know what I mean, you know?

It made it cool to be young and vote Labour.

But New Labour, knowing they were onto a good thing, wanted more.

So one of Blair's inner circle, Margaret McDonagh,

contacted Alan McGee and his head of PR, Andy Saunders.

Margaret McDonagh wanted to understand what we did.

And how we did it.

She wanted to understand how you can manipulate popular culture.

How you can take popular culture and layer on politics

and layer on message.

MUSIC: Wonderwall by Oasis

# Today was gonna be the day they were gonna throw it back to you... #

She was smart enough to realise that if she used us properly,

and she used our knowledge, and she used our contacts, that she

could create something quite special for the Labour Party.

# By now you should have somehow realised what you gotta do... #

So the first thing she asked us for was Oasis' database.

We said, "No can do."

And then she said, "Can you get Noel to do

"the Youth Labour Party conference?"

So I was like, "I doubt it, but I'll ask."

And then I phoned him and

he was like, "I'm fucked, man.

"I'm just back from America, I cannae do it.

"Give them something, McGee. Just give them...

"Give them a gold disc or something."

# Back beat The word is on the street

# That the fire in your heart is out... #

So I went with this massive big fucking multi-platinum thing to Blair.

And I went to the Blackpool youth conference and I met Tony Blair.

# ..feels the way I do about you now. #

Tony Blair very cleverly used Creation Records

as a great example of New Labour.

It's...it's a great company, you know.

We should be really proud. Alan's just telling me he started 12 years ago with a 1,000 quid bank loan,

-and now it has a turnover of 34 million. Now, that's New Labour.

-CHEERING

What you have to remember is everybody is spinning everybody.

Nobody is leading here.

There's too many good PR brains in the room for anybody to be spun.

# Cos maybe

# You're gonna be the one that saves me... #

And when New Labour won the election, it appeared to be win-win.

Everybody benefited. Creation got a huge amount of coverage,

the Labour Party won the election,

everybody won.

It put us very much onto the cultural agenda of the country.

Uh, and my phone didn't stop ringing for two years.

In July 1997, Noel Gallagher and Alan McGee

were invited to Downing Street in another PR coup for New Labour.

We arrived in a Rolls-Royce

and got chased up Downing Street by about 400 paparazzi,

went in, hung out for about two hours,

got shown round the place.

# You name the drama and I'll play the part... #

We knew we were being used, we knew what the deal was,

we knew that we were just part of a machine.

We got conned, but what can you do? Do you know what I mean?

I mean, it's like me and the rest of the country. Do you know what I mean?

# I've seen the storyline

# Played out so many times before. #

I think the ultimate problem was that the curtain got pulled back

and we saw the Wizard of Oz.

We saw the fact that PR had played a major part

in the election of New Labour.

We saw the advent of spin.

The magician revealed his tricks.

And whenever...whenever you do that,

whenever you put it in people's faces, they don't like it.

# And then it's over. #

But it couldn't continue and it didn't.

As the sun set on the 20th century,

the PR machine behind the music business

became a very different beast.

It's different now, because now, of course, artists tweet,

you know, they Instagram, it's a completely different climate.

You know, people especially now, more and more,

cos there's less space, people want to know what the story is.

It's not just down to if the record's good.

So somebody growing up today

that wants to know about Madonna, or whoever,

just has to look at all their YouTube clips and Instagram,

and they tweet.

So what this requires is a re-think for PR,

with a mash-up of old media and new.

And I can't think of two bigger or more diverse giants

to illustrate this than David Bowie and Taylor Swift,

both masters of PR.

In 2013, David Bowie had disappeared from public life

for almost a decade.

Apparently living in New York,

most people thought he'd retired.

However, in early 2013,

Bowie let on to a few of us that he was about to release a new single,

with an album to follow.

But he wasn't going to do any promotions or tour.

So how could PR turn this one around?

How could PR create a new kind of buzz

that mixed traditional PR with something new?

So first we went to Sky News

and then to BBC Radio 4 presenter, John Wilson.

Well, I was excited.

And I knew a lot of other people would be excited.

It's not just any old pop singer releasing a new record.

And I called a mate who's on the Today programme

and I said, "There's a lot of listeners

"that'd be pretty excited over their breakfast."

I think, to be honest,

at first, I'm not persuaded that it's a story for us.

My doubts were this is not normal business for the Today programme,

it's mostly news, politics, current affairs.

'Economically, we have unusual growth.'

And so in that context, doing an item about David Bowie is a risk.

'The time now, 7:51.'

But it was pitched like a bit of breaking news.

And I was persuaded by colleagues

that actually for an audience of the age of the Today programme's audience,

55 or thereabouts, he's a big, iconic figure,

and this was surprising enough

that it deserved its place on the programme.

'7:20, and guess what, David Bowie's released a new single.

'Not something he's done for quite a while, so it's a pretty big musical event.

'The man who alerted us to it, though, is John Wilson.

'This is a genuine surprise and there are going to be people out there, amazingly,

'who will be thinking, "Pop musician releases pop single, big deal, what's the news story?"

'But, you know, David Bowie is no ordinary musician.'

# Where are we now?

# Where are we now? #

This PR campaign was an example of less is more,

a technique that plays well with established artists.

This is the PR campaign that never was.

They wanted it to look like there had been no pre-planning,

this thing was just going to drop from the sky,

David Bowie just re-appears.

But, obviously, the cogs were all whirring behind the scenes.

And the idea of David Bowie returning on the Today programme on Radio 4,

I mean, it's a very clever twist on the idea that this is just a pop star releasing a pop single.

This is a serious cultural moment which breaks through, which deserves news headlines.

Alongside the traditional media,

we also added a limited social-media element.

Part of the plan was that we had pre-warned

influencers like Caitlin Moran, Dylan Jones

that there was going to be something interesting popping into their mail box at 5am the next morning.

And from there it proliferated, they tweeted about it,

told everybody else, and it went like wild fire on social media.

David Bowie is the latest singer to announce a comeback.

I have to come out as a bit of a Bowie fan.

I actually went on a Bowie pilgrimage this summer to Berlin.

Caitlin Moran says, "I'm so insanely excited,

"it's like hearing King Arthur's voice from the cave."

In the case of the Bowie release,

one could suggest it was less and more,

but I suggest that it was Bowie-esque,

um, in being counterintuitive.

And it was a statement about a generation

who were saying, "Me, me, me. Look at me,

"I'm across social media, I'm important."

Everyone was talking Bowie.

PR had focused him not just as an artist,

but now as a cultural icon.

The decision not to play by the usual rules

created a mystique and THAT draws people in.

Bowie's place at music's top table was assured.

But for younger artists, whose audience possibly don't always tune into the Today programme,

it is a case of more is more.

You have to be visible, touchable even.

-It's Taylor Swift, everybody!

-CHEERING

Even before Taylor Swift

became one of the most successful stars on the planet,

she knew exactly what she wanted and where she wanted to be.

# I stay out too late

# Got nothing in my brain. #

She said, "Rick, I want a gold record."

And what that means in the United States is 500,000 units sold.

So my answer to her was, "Then great,

"let's go out and meet 500,000 people."

So, the goal from the beginning was to put her in front of people,

so that she could show them that she was different.

Well, thanks to social media,

Taylor could meet half a million of her fans, electronically at least.

She knew that she would be nowhere without these fans

and she wanted to relate to them.

Taylor Swift appears to be every girl.

I mean, all the girls want to be like Taylor Swift.

And I think there's probably some substance to that,

she is probably a bit like that,

but then she takes it and manipulates it and exaggerates it.

One of the interesting aspects

I have known about show business or talent or music,

is actually the people doing these things

are incredibly bright about themselves.

They recognise what their image is.

In order to spread the Taylor message,

she and her team utilised social media

in a way that put some of us PRs to shame.

Social media is a very powerful tool if used the right way,

or it's just a bunch of noise.

She understands that all forms of social media are different.

And what I mean by that is that she's going to take the most visual piece that she has

and that will be shared on Instagram.

She's going to take the quickest message that she has

and that can be shared on Twitter,

but it's driving them to a YouTube video or a Vevo video.

She uses social media and the tools properly for what they're used for.

And following the massive success of Swift's album 1989,

Taylor used social media to create the perfect publicity stunt for the modern age.

As the holiday season 2014 approached,

Swift, having done her research,

was filmed wrapping carefully chosen presents for a select group of super fans.

This was all then put online.

I found them on the Internet.

I would go online, I would look at their Instagram pages,

or their Tumblr, or their Twitter, or whatever,

and just kind of watch them for months and months.

By studying her fans, known as Swifties,

Taylor was able to give the gifts that she knew they really, really wanted.

Does Taylor have time to scour the Internet

to find out where people like to shop?

Or what their favourite things are? She doesn't.

So her team will go out and find these folks,

and then they'll give her the information,

and then she'll take care of it from there.

It's all about the experience.

And I think that's what Taylor does for her fans better than most.

So what happened was as these fans were opening up these packages,

they were documenting the idea of what was going on.

-And then they started sharing it.

-I'm so happy about this!

It went double viral, because the biggest star in the world

was sending Christmas presents to these fans.

And then it went viral again through the fans' social-media platforms,

because they were telling the world, "Look what my favourite artist thought enough about me to do."

She knows exactly the key points to engage.

She also understands the cultural zeitgeist.

Who to bring in, who to lean on, who to support, where to be,

what events to be at, who to look after.

She has got a very focused idea of her own saleability.

-Shake it off?

-Yes.

-Shake it off?

-Yeah, exactly.

Was it a PR move?

Absolutely it was a PR move,

but who wouldn't want to be on the end of that PR stunt?

So a lot of times, you can use the PR to your advantage.

And I think what's cool about the way she utilises PR,

is there's always a winner, and it's not just her,

but ultimately, in the end, it is her.

# Shake it off. #

So here we are.

You see, great publicists

have always used the media of the age to share a story.

From word of mouth...to social media,

via, of course, print, TV and radio.

Today, we can go direct to the people.

And if the people think it's a great idea, it explodes!

Everything has changed, but, actually, nothing has changed.

Whether or not it's an image makeover or a stunt,

or even your YouTube of delivering Christmas presents to your fans,

it's still about the PR's ability to tell a great story

and to tell it to as many people as possible.

So...gather round, folks.

Hold, hold, hold.

And your new career...begins here.

SHUTTER CLICKS

MUSIC: Always The Sun by The Stranglers