My brief affair with the music industry

I was just watching the Netflix documentary on the legendary music producer, David Foster, and it reminded me of my unlikely, minutely brief and wholly distant, loose-connection with the multi-award winning man.

In 2008 I was running the London office of a new film design agency, an enterprise I had spawned through a previous client relationship - a folly entered into after running into what I considered to be extra time at Momentum Pictures, in a role I had long-outgrown.

My first Momentum boss, and also ex-Universal colleague (although we didn't know each other at that point) Conrad Withey had been brought in to run a new division at Warner Music International, a division that was formerly Warner Vision, a highly successful home entertainment offshoot of the company. The new division was the brainchild of Patrick Vien (now group MD - International at A&E Networks) and he had formed it upon acquiring Conrad's own business, The Rights Company - a company he had set up after he left Momentum, a year or so before I did. I got the call from Conrad, just when I needed it, to become their new Marketing Director.

This new division of Warner Music was called Warner Music Entertainment - and the best thing about it was that it was also a step into the music industry for me, for the first time since I had sold CD's at retail at the beginning of my career in 1988.

Backtrack a couple of decades, and my one true love was music. I was an aspiring songwriter and I dreamed of being a successful commercial songsmith, along the lines of Diane Warren - who wrote big power ballads that hit the top of the charts all across the 80's and 90's. I had cut my first demo aged 16 and had an agent, and a song getting some interest. I had meetings at EMI with A&R people in the late eighties, where they played my cassette and told me that 'guitar solos are so last year, man, it's all about electronic music now' - so to finally be working in an office within the Electric Lighting Studios building that housed the U.K. arm of Atlantic Records was a truly heady experience for me.

Conrad and Patrick had recently secured a major coup signing Katherine Jenkins away from Universal Music - where she had been discovered, signed and long-nurtured. (She was managed by a man called Brian Lane - who had managed bands like Yes and A-ha - and I was way more a fan-boy of him because of it!). And, as the new Marketing Director, it fell upon me to help shape the record and it's cover and marketing campaign, or so I thought...

A few days into the job Conrad said, 'do you want to meet Katherine'?, so we hopped across the road to Patrick's office where the effervescent diva duly bounded into the office to be hugged warmly by Patrick and then Conrad. High fives all around! I had not really been exposed to talent much at that stage of my career, having worked exclusively in home entertainment - where we rarely had access to any major stars - actors who had left their promotional duties firmly within the theatrical window. I have to say that my shyness kicked in and I competely faded into the background.

Warner Music Entertainment was an unusual experiment, one that was actually ahead of its time. The vision was really strong, it was just all too soon and, if anything, the remit was too big. There was short-form comedy being created in the office for our own imprint, www.comedybox.tv - a forerunner to Myspace Comedy, that the former then became, and comedians like Rhys Darby - from Flight of the Conchords, were wandering around the office dressed as chickens. As well as signing Katherine, we brought another (dropped) singer away from Universal Music, Patrizio Buanne - who was managed by Jim Morey (who managed some of the biggest recording stars ever) to do his 3rd record with us, to be produced by David Foster collaborator, Humberto Gattica (I'm not worthy etc.). We released documentaries - including Number 9 Films' excellent film on Junior Eurovision - 'Sounds Like Teen Spirit', Sarah Silverman's 'Jesus is Magic', and I got to release a great doc on Bossa Nova - which was a real passion project for me - one of many, as well as Bruce Dickinson's (of Iron Maiden) feature film, 'Chemical Wedding'. It also (finally) became my introduction to releasing theatrical films, but I digress...

I have to say that moving from film to music was not the dream I had anticipated. I generally didn't take to the more senior people in the music business. I found that showing warmth and enthusiasm was a bad look. Many people seemed glum and bored there, too cool for school. I was in a playback of Patrizio's record with the senior team at WB records, and they were all just looking down and scrolling through their phones, like Donald Trump at a Covid-19 briefing. I was totally aghast, embarrassed and felt just terrible for Patrizio, who was trying to groove along to the his new music - stuff he was proud of - and rightfully so.

There was an exception in a guy at Warner Bros. Records called Dion Singer, whom I really related to, as we both loved proper 'guilty pleasure' music - songs crafted by people like David Foster, I guess - and he really helped us with shaping the records for Katherine and Patrizio. Dion had been a big supporter of the first Micheal Buble record and had massively helped the artist grow outside of the USA and Canada - and to be honest, without the support and dedication of Dion I wonder if that would have happened. Conrad was also not a typical music industry guy - we appreciated artists like Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow, not something our colleagues generally did. I recall saying I was going to see (the Warner artists) A-ha do an acoustic gig at Westfield one lunchtime and being sniggled at by one of the young people at their label.

It came to pass that Katherine had come to Warner's for the opportunity to make a dream record with David Foster, so we went about planning this major event, and it was properly fun suggesting tracks that she might cover. I had a vision for the sleeve that was inspired by the film 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg'. I don't know why I had this vision, I just did. I could somehow see Katherine styled like that - inspired by a retro Catherine Deneuve. The USA team of Warner Bros. showed real interest and enthusiasm in the record and suggested that we shoot the cover photo in Los Angeles, which I literally jumped at. I had booked the photographer and stylist, my room at the legendary rock 'n' roll stay-over, the Sunset Marquis Hotel (it was a toss up over that or the Chateau Marmont) and we were ready to roll. Katherine was very excited about it all too. But the fly in the ointment came when the boss of WB UK decided that it should instead all be done in the U.K. and to-boot he wanted one of his own guys to supervise the shoot, over me.

To say that this was a big disappointment for me would be a huge understatement. To miss out on my first trip to L.A. (A trip I had missed out on when working my notice at Universal 7 years earlier) - staying at the hotel and overseeing a photo-shoot with the guys at Reprise - the label of Sinatra? The irony is that we used the exact same photographer and stylist and the cover came out pretty much as per my original vision - I just had to accept playing second fiddle to another guy who had overseen countless album shoots before. Fair enough, I guess, for such an important album... I did get my shot though, as I later did it all for Patrizio's record, and it was fun doing that photoshoot - even if it was also done in London.

Ultimately, both records turned out great, but were sadly not big hits, and Katherine eventually returned to Universal, Patrick Vien left and the division got shut down, bit by bit, with my role being made redundant 18 months later - along with everyone else - except for Conrad, who went on to have huge successes as an A&R man with Hugh Laurie's boogie-woogie piano albums and in discovering The Overtones too. Conrad, ever the innovator, now manages another of his own companies - 'Instrumental'.

Along the way we had a #2 hit single with Aled Jones and Terry Wogan's version of 'Little Drummer Boy', in aid of Children in Need, and many, many other fun excursions, too numerous to mention. I now realise just how lucky I was to have had this opportunity, even though I had felt like a pretty unhappy fish-out-of-water most of the time I was there.