The Inside Story of a Number One Single

Success is relative: it's what we can make of the mess we've made of things.

T.S. Eliot.

Every now and then, a moment comes along that indelibly imprints itself upon the memory. For me, one such moment came at 3:40 pm on the 8th of May 1994; twenty five years to the day when I originally wrote this.

At that time the new UK singles chart was announced on the Radio One 'Top 40' show every Sunday evening. It was a closely guarded secret to which very few were privy.?However, if your record happened to be the new number one, someone from the BBC would phone to give you the good news in advance.

And so it was: “Inside", the song I had written, produced, and then released through my own record label, was about to be announced as this week’s number one.

I don’t remember saying very much, something like: 'So that’s definite?'

Isn’t it interesting how at moments like these, words tend to fail us? But maybe it isn't very surprising; this was the culmination of a long series of incredibly risky... perhaps even foolhardy...decisions. A series which had begun seven years earlier when I’d quit my job at Solomon Brothers on Wall Street to start a production company. All these years later, I have to say if one of my kids were to suggest taking such a step, I’d strongly advise against it!?

In fact, being offered the job by Salomon was, in itself, another moment I’ll never forget. Salomon Brothers was one of the jewels in the crown of graduate recruitment and I was thrilled to land it. When I got back to Oxford that evening, after the final round of interviews at Angel Court in the City, I felt like a conquering hero. It was amazing, and made all the more amazing by the fact that Dave Schofield, a great friend of mine who was studying at the same college (Brasenose), had also been offered a job at Salomon. There were serious celebrations in Dave’s rooms in New Quad that late March evening.

Great universities offer great opportunities. Wall St. was one, but another which I’d been trying simultaneously to explore was music. Enter here another great friend of mine, Robert Heathcote.

Rob is, without any fear of exaggeration, a genius. In fact, he’s a genius in not just one, but several fields: a master of markets with a first-rate academic mind; a hyper-talented musician who's also been consistently accurate in predicting the future of tech for decades. Anyway, a few months before I’d been offered the job by Salomon, Rob had suggested we meet in London. He'd been in the year above me at Oxford and, having finished his engineering degree, had left the university and was working in Interest Rate Swaps at CSFB.

Rob and I had been recording together for the previous couple of years and the results suggested there just might be the potential for it to be something more than just a hobby, although that idea seemed little more than a pipe dream. The reason he wanted to meet in London was to show me where music technology was heading.

Bloody hell!

Although I’d been a musician since childhood, until that day, I'd been just an electric guitar and valve amp kind of a guy. I’d never heard of Midi and only vaguely heard of sampling. And so, what Rob showed me that day in Denmark St 'Tin Pan Alley' changed my life.

We saw the PPG Wave synth, the Linn 9000 drum machine, and a Roland Guitar synth, if you haven’t heard of these, you’ve certainly heard them in action. We also looked at a new range of high-quality, yet affordable, recording equipment including the astonishing new reverb unit, the Yamaha Rev-7. I’d never heard anything remotely like it. The setting ‘reverb-flange’ for example; put your guitar through that and out came what sounded to me like a complete soundtrack! But there was more. The astonishing sampler, the Ensoniq Mirage. I was flabbergasted...it was as if Rob commanded an entire orchestra from his keyboard. To say I was blown away doesn’t even begin to capture it.?

In a state of quasi-religious euphoria, we adjourned to a pizza restaurant in Hanover Sq. There, Rob suggested (given the amazingly good HP terms) that we start a little business recording Oxford bands. I was living in a rented cottage with a couple of friends out in Woodstock. Rob's idea was that we could put a studio in the attic. This, by the way, is Woodstock just outside Oxford, it has nothing to do with the '60s festival which was in the States.

What astonishes me now... now that I’m a grown-up and responsible father... is that it never for one second occurred to either of us to check if the planned transformation of the tranquil 17th-century cottage into a high-tech studio full of loud bands would be ok with my poor housemates. The truth is we just went ahead and did it without consulting them. And so, Will or Charlie, if you ever happen to read this, I’m very, very sorry and so is Rob!

Anyway, between us, we bought the gear we needed and within the month we’d opened for business. We put an ad in the university 'Daily Info' and also in the local papers. Amazingly, the bands started to come. Rob, of course, could only come at the weekends and I did have the little matter of my impending finals, but we booked in as many days as we could.

One of the bands, The Love Bastards, came all the way from Cambridge. Theirs was pretty avant-garde stuff which featured, on lead vocals, the latterly famous artist Marc Quinn...the guy that made a self-portrait with a frozen cast of nine pints of his own blood.?

Moving swiftly on...within just a few months, the equipment had paid for itself. Could this be a career?

Well, the early 1980s was a different time, the idea of a couple of Oxford graduates going into music production seemed a lot more off the wall than it would now. When I mentioned it to my father, he said: “It’s all right as a bit of fun, but it isn’t really the sort of thing you could do as a full-time career is it?” Of course, Rob’s opportunity costs were already high (CSFB paid well), and it looked like mine were going to be too.

The next term, 'Hilary', I was elected President of the Oxford University Economics Society. Another unforgettable moment, but why mention it here? Well, I had a plan: in addition to inviting such academic luminaries as GLS Shackle, John Eatwell, Victoria Chick, and Stephen Lewis to come to speak at the Oxford Union, I also decided to invite the bosses of London record companies. I had no contacts in the record business and thought this might be a way to make some. As I said, great universities provide great opportunities, and I figured Oxford would provide the necessary pulling power!

Of course, things don’t always go to plan, and most of the people I wrote to...didn’t reply. Although Richard Branson did send an incredibly polite letter explaining that he'd loved to have come, but would be out of the country. I was, of course, thrilled enough to get a personal reply from him, and I carried it around in my pocket for days; showing it to everyone I met.

Now, the person I most wanted to meet was Jill Sinclair. It would be impossible to overestimate Jill or her importance. Still, in her early 30s, she was the boss of the ludicrously fashionable ZTT records and also of the world-famous Sarm recording studios. Miraculously, Jill agreed to come to speak to us!

It was beyond belief.

Rob was supposed to come over to Oxford that night, but CSFB commitments got in the way. This was a great shame. Not only was Jill charming, elegant, brilliant, and fascinating, but … she also invited me to come with her to Sarm West: “to meet Trevor.”

Trevor!

Trevor Horn...a man whose only rival to the claim of the greatest ever record producer is Sir George Martin himself... was Jill’s husband. Trevor Horn...my absolute hero and I was actually going to meet him.

You know the scene in Wayne’s World where Wayne and Garth meet Alice Cooper?

At Sarm I was allowed to sit in while Trevor worked on a session with Yes, and later I saw Julian Mendelsohn working with a new band called The Pet Shop Boys, and then Steve Lipson working with Frankie Goes to Hollywood. At the time, Sarm West was the foremost studio in the world. All I could think was “This is where I want to be.” Then I sat down with the gods and demigods and had dinner in the Sarm refectory. Astonishingly, Trevor sat next to me and was incredibly patient as I plied him with my gauche questions about how he'd achieved various effects and sounds on his many sparkling productions. As soon as I got back to Woodstock, late that night, I called Rob...boy did you miss out!

In early July, I would be leaving for New York and the Salomon training programme, but when the time came, indeed right up to the day before I left, Rob and I were recording demos for ZTT in Sarm West. But of course, I knew I had to leave all that behind and go to New York.

Salomon Brothers was a fantastic place to work. The people were genuinely incredible. That the training programme was full of the brightest, and the most motivated, probably goes without saying. But the vast majority were actually multi-talented: there were several world-class classical musicians; I also recall a distinguished ex-fighter pilot; a couple of seriously successful entrepreneurs; journalists; writers; and the American heavyweight Karate champion. Mike Lewis, soon to find fame with his brilliant account of life at Salomon, Liar’s Poker, had gone through the training programme just a few months before, and our group included such future titans of finance as Alan Howard (Brevan Howard), and Johannes Huth (KKR).

However, every Saturday, I’d go down to the music shops on 48th, in particular the tiny, but soon to be legendary, Rudy's. There, I made friends with Rudy Pensa himself and the guitar design god, John Suhr. I purchased one of the very first Pensa-Suhr guitars. It remains a prized possession to this day. It was clear that my heart was more drawn to 48th than to Wall Street, but I knew the sensible option was to stick with this incredible opportunity, and anyway, I was having the time of my life.

But the goddess Fortuna is always poised.

*****

On the evening of the 8th of October 1986, as I was getting ready to go out to a business dinner at the Windows on the World (the restaurant at the top of the north tower of the World Trade Centre) the phone rang. It was my sister. She made small talk... how’s the weather... how’s work etc; routine stuff.

But then I suddenly realised it was the middle of the night back in England.

“Why on earth are you calling so late?”

My father, it turned out, had been diagnosed with lung cancer and was about to have surgery.

He hadn't wanted me to know. Dad was a fighter and had the attitude that his cancer was nothing; something he would easily beat without having to put me off my stride in New York. But my sister decided to break ranks and tell me.

“There’s no need for you to come home, it’s more or less routine.”

“When is the operation?”

“Tomorrow...I’ve told him I was going to call you, but he’s adamant there’s no need for you to come home.”

“I’ll call him, which hospital?”

“No, you can’t he’s fast asleep.”

It’s almost impossible to process news like that.

I remember little of the next few hours, but at some stage, I got in touch with Mel Strauss in HR. Mel, it has to be said, was brilliant.

“Peter, if you need some time with your father the firm will cover it.”

So, I booked a ticket for the late flight. Really, I should have cancelled dinner, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I recall my bewilderment as I looked out at the spectacular fading New York sunlight and the millions of twinkling lights emerging from the dusk as day turned to night.

Little did I know, I wouldn't be back in the city for eight years.

*****

This was a time before mobile phones, and so after I'd landed at Heathrow sometime on the 9th, I called my parents' house from a pay phone; there was no reply. I presumed everyone must be at the hospital. It was only then I realised, I didn't know which hospital to call. I made my way to a friend’s apartment in Bayswater. The plan was to freshen up and then take a train from Euston up to Macclesfield; the nearest mainline station to my parents’ house.

The details are now very fuzzy, but I do remember that the phone in the apartment kept ringing. I didn’t answer it...it wasn’t my phone. From that, it seems I must have been there alone for a time, maybe my friend had gone out to grab some milk or something; I really can't recall. Finally, washed and changed, I was just making my way out of the apartment when the phone rang yet again.

This time I answered.

“Peter is that you?”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t heard, have you? Your father died this morning.”

How they knew where to find me, I’ll never know, but somehow they did.

Sometimes I read negative things about Salomon Brothers, but their treatment of me really couldn’t have been any better. They told me to take as much time off as I needed, and they also offered me a temporary transfer to the London office, the massive new trading floor at Victoria Plaza.

This seemed a very sensible idea. My mother was in a desperate state: forty years of marriage, and more than fifty years of companionship, had come to an abrupt end and she was falling apart.

The next few months were very dark. I was supposed to return to New York in January, but my mother’s precarious state made that impossible. By April, it was obvious to me that my position at Salomon was untenable. Once again, the firm couldn’t have been better, but in truth, I wasn’t able to give very much in return.

Gradually, it dawned on me that I might be able to turn this bleak situation into some kind of opportunity. At the weekends I began to draw up a business plan for a production company.

A business plan is rarely a good predictor of a new business’s performance; its primary function is to focus the mind and to demonstrate to potential investors that the principal is able to think clearly about the potential strengths and, more importantly, weaknesses of his or her idea.

After many iterations, the best financial plan seemed to dictate a huge upfront capital expenditure. I decided to build a state-of-the-art studio and run a production company out of it. The revenue streams were to come from three, independent, sources: writing, recording, and production. Writing, it seemed to me, could take the form of songs for bands; soundtracks for TV dramas and films; and jingles for advertising. Recording could be of bands signed to record companies; sound effects sessions for film, TV, or radio; or of the company’s own productions.

I went to see the ever-helpful Mel Strauss and told him that I thought I should call it a day at Salomon. Once again, he couldn’t have been more gracious. I told him I was going to try setting up my own business and he said: “Well if it doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we’re always here.”

I went through the formalities of resignation and then walked down the escalator; handed my pass into security and went out into the exhaust-fumed air of Buckingham Palace Rd.

Was this the dawn of a bright new future, or had I just thrown away the chance of a lifetime?

***************

Over the next few years, I went through the reality of a start-up: non-linear progression.

There were huge surges forward followed by massive setbacks; lucky breaks and seemingly unjust failures; the occasional bad debt, and the pain of interest rates shooting up to 15% ...making servicing the astronomical bank loan very difficult.

But somehow, by 1991, I had repaid most of the bank loan. The company had also begun to win awards: a Cannes Gold and a couple of British Television awards.

I was, naturally, very interested in what my competition was up to.

One of the companies was doing amazingly well. To be frank, their output didn’t really impress me, so what was their secret? It was their producer, Tessa Sturridge. She seemed to have a genius for bringing work in and producing a job once it had been landed. I decided to offer her a job. But why would she take it? It took me several months to persuade her, but eventually, she agreed. This wasn’t just good for business, these days, she goes by the name Tessa Lawlor!

The next few years saw the business steadily progress, although there were things like the flood which almost put us out of business! We had developed a significant presence in commercials, TV dramas, Station Idents, and production. We'd also built up a superb roster of composers including Barrington Pheloung (who wrote the Inspector Morse theme); Robert Lockhart (Distant Voices, Still Lives), Mark Russell (Cold Feet), Mark’s brother Simon (The 911 Faker, Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland), and Alex Heffes (Last King of Scotland,?and Mandela: Long Road to Freedom).

The more successful a company becomes, the better the opportunities which come its way.

With that in mind, let’s move forward to August 1993.

We were asked to come into the ad agency BBH for a meeting about a ‘top secret project.’ Uniquely, we had to sign NDAs. It had to be Levi’s.

At that time, the BBH Levi’s commercials were the pinnacle of television and cinema advertising. Time after time, the agency had produced classics; classics which had heavily relied on the use of music: Through the Grapevine; Mannish-Boy; Stand By Me; When a Man Loves a Woman; 20th Century Boy etc etc.

So, why had they called us ... a company which produced original music ... in for a meeting?

Perhaps they just wanted us to provide the sound design; the sound effect backdrop?

At BBH, we met the copywriter, the art director, the TV producer, Philippa, and the duo who were going to direct the film.

It was Levi’s; Levi’s Creek.

The script was, by far, the best I had ever seen. The young women thinking they had the jeans of a handsome young guy swimming in the creek, whereas, in fact, they belonged to a ravaged old man!

They weren’t very sure about the music. One of the ideas was for me to write a choral piece to run through the entire commercial.

They wanted it to begin with a sort of hymn, the sort of hymn which might have been sung in a small American country church in the 19th century. Then, on the grand reveal, the music was to move into an emotional soundtrack...the sound of awakening.

The regulations prevented the use of genuine religious music, so I had to write lyrics which alluded to the genre without actually being it. I booked the brilliant Ambrosian Singers. They were amazing.

We were told that BBH were also talking to Nellie Hooper and Massive Attack about a rival track. Naturally, that made us think there was very little chance of winning the pitch. Massive Attack: one of the most innovative and perhaps more importantly from BBH’s perspective, one of the coolest bands around.

This process went on until November. There were countless changes in brief but the upshot was that the agency wasn’t all that keen on Massive Attack’s track, nor were they all that keen on the choral piece I’d written.

They wanted to use my opening, but they weren't convinced by the denouement; the music on the big reveal.

So of course, they began to look at licensing existing songs...the tried and tested Levi’s formula, and that seemed to be the end of the job so far as we were concerned.

We had no involvement in the search process and know very little about it. But for some reason, they couldn’t find anything that worked for them. So, in a last ditched attempt, they came back and asked me to write something over the weekend.

They were going to keep my faux hymn (and the cinematic synth and Hammond backdrop I'd constructed), but they needed something new over the big change.

In truth, they’d become snow blind and my brief was ‘just do anything that works.’

Over the weekend I kept starting ideas only to reject them. I worked into the early hours of Saturday morning...nothing was any good.

What counts as a good track anyway?

I too had become snow blind.

In the end, I had to have something to present on Monday morning. It is impossible to overstate just how important landing a Levi’s commercial would be for the company. So, as a final throw of the dice, I dug out an old song I’d written when I was at school. It was called ‘Every Time I See You.’ which I’d written when I was seventeen in an attempt to sound like the band Chic.

Now, this track "Everytime I See You" had, by 1993, only been performed in public on one occasion, way back in May 1980, at South Trafford College by a band called Scorched Earth.

I wasn't a member of Scorched Earth, that band was led by my old compadre Geoff Foulkes. Until a few months previously, I'd been in a band called Eclipse along with Geoff and his brother Steve. Geoff had liked my new song and asked me if he could perform it with his new band, I said "Sure, why not?". And so, I went along to the gig at South Trafford to listen to Geoff's arrangement. There were about forty people there.

Most of those people will remember that gig because of the support band: The Patrol. It was, I believe, The Patrol's first gig. Why would they remember the debut gig of some obscure south Manchester rock band? Well, the Patrol later became The Stone Roses.

Interesting that the tiny audience got to see the Roses' first gig and the first public performance of the song that would later become Inside.

Anyway, a few months later, I'd recorded Every Time I See You with my new band One Way Street. At this point it had evolved into a rock track, it was pretty good but I'd done nothing with it and it had sat on my shelves collecting dust for twelve years. I cannot now remember why this old track came to mind, probably nothing more than desperation. But I decided to update it by playing the old bass riff as a guitar line; play the root notes on the bass like the Pistols did; and play simple root and fifth chords on the guitar, four in a bar, and see what happens.”

[WARNING: TECHIE SECTION COMING UP]

I spent an age on the guitar sound. I had in mind a sort of legato effect; I wanted the chord changes to be almost nebulous; sort of out of focus, like a huge string section.

I used two different guitars: my beloved Pansa-Sur Strat I'd bought at Rudy's, and an ancient, Pelham Blue, Gibson Trini Lopez semi-acoustic. The two guitars sounded so different that they layered wonderfully, the Pensa-Sur providing the bite, the Trini Lopez; the depth.

I’d hired in a vast Marshall cabinet and put my Soldano amp through it. Then I put a pair of B&K mics at the front of the cab and an AKG 414 at the back of the cab. I then overdubbed each guitar part many times. By the end, it sounded pretty massive but, in truth, I had no idea if it was any good or not.

There was a remaining issue: what, could I do about the bathos moment...the moment where the girls realise they are holding the jeans not of the handsome young guy, but of the wizened old man?

I thought an exposed bass riff might be a good idea.

I've always liked exposed bass riffs. The locus classicus is probably Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain", but there is also Thin Lizzy's "Dancing in the Moonlight", and one I'd always loved played by John Dalton in the Kinks' "I'm in Disgrace". And countless others of course.

It was important to achieve a distinctive sound, so I used my old Status bass and put it through the Soldano guitar amp. I then played it using a plectrum right up near the bridge, it had, to my ears, a sort of 50s twang about it. I then fed the signal through the Eventide H3000 to widen the sound and add micro-detuning either side of the notes.

[END OF TECHIE SECTION]

With the bass riff in place, the track was complete.

I played it to Tessa.

“What do you think of this?”

“Seems ok.”

The BBH people were due to come in at 9 am on the Monday, so at 4 am, I went back into the studio and knocked up a quick dance track. I had it in my mind that what they really wanted was something more like that. I honestly have absolutely no memory of that track now, but I do recall it was what we played them first.

The directing duo weren’t really rock people, I couldn't imagine them liking the grinding guitars and driving bass; their taste was more Sub-urban than Sub-Pop. The dance track was, however, met with polite indifference...the job was ineluctably slipping away.

So as a final move, I said: “I’ve also written this.” and played them my rock track.

Philippa, the agency producer, had great experience of Levi’s commercials and she was also a grown-up. She cleared the fog of collective confusion and took charge.

“That’s great! Can you make versions for all the films?” There was a 90-second, a 60-second, a 30-second and, I think, a few 10-second versions.

“Sure no problem.”

Had we actually pulled it off? I hardly dared ask.

Later that day we heard that John Hegarty loved the music. All we needed now was approval from brand management and we were home and dry.

A few days later, it was all confirmed. Fantastic!

By now, the snow blindness had cleared and the music together with the way the film had been shot and the really superb script combined to make something very special. Have a look at the link at the bottom of this article.

*********

At this stage, there was absolutely no thought about releasing the soundtrack, none whatsoever.

However, no sooner had the commercial gone to air than the phone in our office began to ring. Every day scores of people phoned up either to try to buy the song or just to tell us how much they liked it.

Now that was very, very unusual.

We’d made hundreds of commercials over the previous few years and in the vast majority of cases, not a single member of the public had phoned about the soundtrack.

Finding who we were and what our number was, took, in those pre-internet days, serious determination. In a really exceptional case, we might receive ten calls from the public over the four week period in which a commercial would run. On this commercial, we were getting about ten an hour.

I thought there may be some mileage in this. And so I got in contact with Clive Black at EMI. Were there, I wondered, any EMI bands that might want the song?

It’s many years since I saw Clive, he was a really nice guy. However, he was very clear about two things: Firstly, the only reason why the previous soundtracks had been hits after being on a Levis commercial was because they were already established songs, there was no chance of a commercial breaking a new song. This was a biblical truth.

Secondly, that although my song was an effective soundtrack, it didn’t have the makings of a hit song.

I didn’t agree.

So I approached other major labels, loads of them. Surely this was a hit? But no.

Sony, Warners, ZTT, and many others were unanimous: a commercial could never break a new song and my song wasn’t any good anyway.

But the calls from the public kept on coming!

By this time, I was out of debt. I didn’t have a car and had to live very frugally, but I did have a one-bedroom flat above the chemist in Primrose Hill.?

So I hatched a plan: I decided to start my own label. I went to Midland Bank and asked if I could get a loan against my flat in order to pay to press some CDs of the song. In principle, they agreed.

I then secured a distribution deal with a company called 3MV, they could get the CD into the shops.

Next, I went to see a plugger...these are the people that take the records into radio stations trying to get on playlists. We agreed a fee.

However, there was still a problem, there was no band!

I’d written the lyrics (although no one seems to have noticed this, they're based around Plato’s allegory of the Cave with what I had thought to be a very obvious reference to "The Trolly Problem" in the lyric: Fat man starts to fall!) and I’d structured the song, but what I really needed now was a singer to front it.

I asked everyone I knew for suggestions.

At least 40 people wanted to have a go. I wish we had filmed the auditions, there were some fantastically eccentric renditions.

I remember one guy, called something like ... Milo, who shouted ‘fuck’ at the end of each line! (1976 is on the line, it's looking for Milo.) There was also a young woman who went on to be a successful TV presenter, but what we couldn’t find was anyone who could sing the damn thing. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. There was a guy who could; a guy called Adrian who worked at a music equipment hire company. I offered Adrian the job but he decided not to take it. He had his own band and didn’t want to jeopardise it. Fair enough.

(Addendum 21/10/24 I happened to find Adrian's audition recording of 'Inside' the other day. Such a shame he didn't take the job, his voice sounds great. He's a bit like Mick Jagger, or maybe Michael Hutchins. It would have been a much cooler record with Adrian)

So, with time running out, we put a small ad in the back of Melody Maker.

Only two people replied. One was a brilliant Spanish girl. She had a great image and, judging by the tape she sent, a brilliant voice. The only problem was no one answered the phone when I called the number she’d sent in. And so, despite many attempts, I never was able to make contact.

That left us with a choice of one: a guy called Ray from Edinburgh who’d also sent a tape after seeing the ad in Melody Maker. With no other options left open to us, we gave him the job.

For the sake of the video, we still needed a drummer. I’d played the drums on the song, so I needed someone to mime my parts. Our stand-in receptionist put forward her brother Ross McFarlane.

Ross was, and is, brilliant. A natural star who’s gone on to great things. After my project, he joined the Proclaimers and then went on to join Texas. These days, Ross is, by common consent, one of the UK’s top drummers. But the first time I met him was on the day of the video shoot.

There was only a tiny budget for a video, but we needed one for the Chart Show and for MTV. I can’t now remember how I found the director, but he did it for ￡12,000 which was cheap in those days.

Unfortunately, it shows. The video is a dreadful mess without any narrative.

However, I simply didn’t have the money to re-shoot and we were stuck with it.

I also needed a name for the ‘band’.

One night, Tessa and I were in a restaurant when we realised the people at the tables all around us were talking about the new Levi's track.

They were trying to work out which band had performed the track; they were trying to guess the name.

Tessa said, “It’s like Rumplestiltskin...no one can guess the name.”

And I said: a ha...there’s the band name.

I was also amused by the fact that Rumplestiltskin vanished in a puff of smoke which is precisely what I had in mind for the ‘band’ after the record!

I then organised the manufacture of as many CDs as I afford with my new bank loan. I can’t remember the exact number, but it was about 50,000. The release date was now just a week away.

Radio One put the song on their B list, I thought that was amazing, but was even more amazing when the first DJ that played it said: “I think that could be a future number 1”.

It was astonishing. And, despite the dreadful video, the Chart Show agreed to play it and MTV put it on rotation.

Monday came ... the day of release.

We went down to HMV on Oxford St to see the CD in stock! Even that was amazing.

The first indication of how sales were progressing came on the Wednesday.

We were stunned to hear it was the highest selling single of the week up to that point. Then, Top of the Pops called, could the band come on next week’s show?

How could all this be happening so quickly?

By the end of Thursday, the CD had sold out; every single copy I'd pressed had gone.

There was no chance of pressing any more in time for this week’s chart and that’s why the single's first week's chart position was number 5 rather than number 1.

However, the next week, with financial constraints no longer an issue, we pressed a huge quantity.

The midweek came out and again we were at number 1, only this time, there was enough stock to meet demand. On the Saturday, the Chart Show had the video at number 1 and on Sunday, the 8th of May, 1994 Inside by Stiltskin was confirmed as the UK’s number one single.

Here is the commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skWFyop_pxU

A few months later, I was finally back in New York. This time at the behest of Warner Brothers; I had been flown over first class to sign a deal with Elektra Records.

As I signed the North American record deal, in a room high in the Time Warner building, I paused for a second and looked out of the window across the Manhattan skyline towards the towers of Wall St. and thought to myself, How very strange.

Post Script 2024

What a learning experience it all was, vital to my later career as an economist.

One quick illustration, my time in the record business brought Game Theory to life. Specifically, I was a constant participant in situations where the players had radically different, and usually conflicting, incentives;?radically different time frames; and radically different approaches to honesty. All this was simultaneously frustrating, captivating, and generally amazing.