10 MusicWeek 17.08.12 THEBIGINTERVIEWJONATHANSHALIT ROAR EMOTIONS
Jonathan Shalit on Tulisa, television – and making sure you reach the top
MANAGEMENT BY TIM INGHAM
T
he bowl of fruit which Jonathan Shalit’s assistant delivers to him at 11.30am each morning is resting comfortably on his lap. Across from the ROAR Global founder – above
the spotless leather sofa and solid wood coffee table presenting the biographies of various famous associates – are the career highlight photos: Jonathan with the Queen, Jonathan with the Mayor of London, Jonathan with the Prime Minister and Jonathan with President Clinton. In the corner of the teetotal exec’s towering west
London office sits a duo of cut-glass decanters on a silver tray, one filled with port, the other brandy. Next to them hangs a two-foot-square cartoonish canvas of Shalit’s own face. Plenty of people have told me Jonathan is old
school showbiz; some respectfully nodding to the agent-cum-manager’s time-honoured etiquette and his support of charities such as Chicken Shed Theatre and The Variety Club, others sniggering at his fondness for luvvie glamour, and the fact he still does his biggest deals in The Ivy. Dressed in a neat waistcoat with a significant
gold cachet on his wrist and a signet ring on his finger, he suits both descriptions; a 50-year-old mogul fully comfortable with his persona as an impresario steeped in bygone customs. Shalit talks the language of showbiz’s ruling
class; the lexicon of charity dinners, of self- promotion, of top London restaurants and of
ABOVE Room with a view: Jonathan Shalit’s ROAR Global office, where snaps of his career highlights fill the shelves
musical theatre. He explains how these suavities have helped
him access and click with the top bosses of all of the UK’s light entertainment touchstones - The Daily Mail, Global Radio, ITV’s Daybreak and BBC Breakfast. He recently accepted an ambassadorial and
educative role on the music industry MBA at Henley Business School, making him the only music manager in the world entitled to sign off ‘professor’ – an opportunity in which he regularly and readily indulges. “Different people have different opinions of
me,” he says. “You put your head above the parapet, people shoot at you. But actually at the core of what I do is honesty and genuineness. I never take on anyone unless I genuinely believe in their talent or their potential.” Shalit was always determined to impress himself
– literally and figuratively – at the centre of London’s razzmatazz machine. Aged 18, forcibly encouraged into becoming a
Lloyds broker by concerned parents, he pinned his escape hopes on a moment of madness: giving a letter to a window cleaner outside Saatchi & Saatchi and instructing him to deliver it to the boardroom above. When the company’s top execs looked down, they saw Shalit dressed in a sandwich board that read: ‘Young, creative and able.’ He was hired. This brazen, direct approach to business’ top
movers has served him well: years later, in 1993, Shalit cheekily approached Sir George Martin,
asking him to steer a Gershwin tribute by harmonica genius Larry Adler. It wasn’t long before Sir George, Sting, Elton John and Cher were on board with the project – and Shalit was mixing in the circles to which he always dreamed he was destined. “My time in advertising taught me that
everything in media entertainment goes to the top,” he says. “Take ITV: all these cool acts want to be on it to sell records. Ultimately, there’s one guy who decides everything: which music goes on, if Ant and Dec or Lorraine Kelly present, or if Tulisa is the new X-Factor judge. His simple question is: ‘Will my viewers like them?’ Primarily, it’s my job to convince him.” Shalit made serious headway amongst light
entertainment’s aristocracy with his first global breakthrough act, Charlotte Church, who went on to have two double-platinum albums in America. But these days, Shalit is better known for his urban- pop successes in music, from Big Brovaz and Jamelia to N-Dubz and Tulisa’s burgeoning solo career. Fifteen MOBO awards to the good, how exactly did he make the jump from the Voice Of An Angel to Dappy? “If you’re going to be globally successful, you’ve
got to enter the global game – and the global game is controlled by people like me,” he replies. “That’s why N-Dubz were so clever; they identified that if they went to an urban manager from a council estate who’s a cool dude with a gun in the back of his Jag, that wasn’t going to get them to the global stage. But I could take Tulisa to
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