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07.12.12 Music Week 13
the end because they know we bring as much to the table helping them launch a band’s career as [any] other company could do. If you’re a mate of a band [and managing them],
it’s going to be much harder for you to argue against these deals: you have no resource, you’re working off a mobile phone out of your bedroom. It’s going to be really hard for someone with that sort of setup to justify not paying all the ancillaries [in a 360] to the labels. It’s interesting when you have an extreme example like a Lady Gaga, who’s on a 360, who may do a $150m Live Nation buyout of her tour. Does that mean the label automatically gets $22m [15%]? No, what they did is say: ‘This is such a monstrous amount of money and there’s all these partners – the promoter, the agent, the manager, the label and the artist, let’s sit round a table and work it out.’ They ended up giving X amount to one party and X amount to another – whatever was fair. When you have extreme success, everyone’s
always happy to talk and negotiate. It’s when you have failure that there can be problems.
It must be tough for kids coming into the management business… We have young managers downstairs. What’s really hard is if you sign a band to a major for a £60,000 record advance, and the manager’s on 20%, the manager gets £12,000. Great. If he’s a young kid and he’s 20 years old, he might think: ‘This is more than I’ve ever earned in one cheque, ever.” But take your tax provision off there, plus £1,000
on your mobile phone because you ended up going to the US for a couple of weeks and weren’t aware what calls were costing when you were stuck on the tour bus. Then you’ve got to do your VAT, then you get fined because you forgot your VAT. Trying to run a small business with a band
that’s started happening is very challenging. You might get another £60,000 advance for your publishing, so bingo you’ve got another £12,000.
But maybe that’s all you’re going to see because there’s no touring profits on the first cycle. Maybe 18 months go by before you see any other money. It’s really hard to juggle. There’s not a lot of money in management unless you’re fortunate enough to have a really successful act who’s going somewhere that lands you £100,000 in one big cheque.
What do you offer young managers who come to work in the Quest building? There’s no set template for how that works. Maybe there’s a manager who’s 22 years old whose band is blowing up. We can offer them a back-end resource to advise on contracts – we have in-house business affairs specialists. We can help with accounts, with billing; essentially the running of the financial side of things. If they want to learn, they can, and if they want to just push that business stuff onto our team they can do that too.
To be frank, what do you get? We’d usually do an income share. It might not even be that much – we’ll just take 20% of revenues. But then if I come up with another band we both really love, perhaps we can do them together and go 50/50. We cover all the overhead of the guys downstairs, we’ve got US resource they can tap into and office space over the Atlantic they can use – or our staff can attend meetings on their behalf.
What exactly is your relationship with Live Nation/Front Line Artist Management? It’s very simple. I didn’t need to do a deal with anyone and I didn’t need any money – this company is profitable. The UK’s a funny country when it comes to business, because with any limited company you publicly publish your accounts on Companies House. That’s why I have multiple companies and a private US company. I’ve tried to look at some of my competitors to see what they’re doing, and I seem to be the only
“360 deals are a good revenue stream for record companies. My main problem is that I don’t yet feel the labels contribute enough to justify them” SCOTT RODGER, QUEST
guy in the world who pays tax. I must be messing up somewhere! [Laughs] So with [Front Line], we have a five-year
passive deal. What was most attractive to me was being able to work with Roger Ames. I’ve been an admirer of his work since I was a kid, and I used to be really scared to go and meet him. To be able to collaborate with someone who has way more experience and knowledge of deal-making strategy and relationships on the top tier is really exciting. Do I need to let other people come into my company to do that? Maybe not. Maybe I can just call him up and go for a beer. But I also wanted to give the acts I have a bigger
outreach and a bigger resource – and Irving [Azoff ]’s office has a full in-house radio, TV, marketing, digital, branding and sponsorship departments. There’s a couple of hundred people who work there. It’s a mammoth resource and being able to tap into that is invaluable. We don’t report to anyone at Live Nation, but they do offer me things from time to time – that’s quite an incentive. A big act may come along – they’ve already
offered me two of the biggest acts in the world but they didn’t quite come through. As far as the deal goes, it’s a simple profit share arrangement over five years, which we’re two years into. There’s zero investment, there’s no monthly retainer. There’s no Live Nation money in this company.
Is Irving Azoff an inspiration to you and Quest? Absolutely. He’s a fascinating guy – he’s super-bright and works really hard. And he works insane hours. He’s completely on it and the setup they have is amazing, a building full of smart people.
When you walk in there, you have to up your game. These are seriously successful people, and I think that rubs off on Irving’s clients.
CALL ME, DAVE... SECURING A PRODUCER AND KEEPING AN EYE ON LIAM’S ‘AMAZING’ ALBUM
OF ALL THE ALBUMS ON QUEST’S ROSTER, Scott Rodger may be most enthused about the second record from Beady Eye – Liam Gallagher’s post-Oasis band, which features Andy Bell and Gem Archer. “They’re recording right now,” he
explains. “It’s probably the most exciting record I’ve worked on for as long as I can remember. Everyone thinks they know exactly what record Beady Eye are going to deliver, but they’ve completely turned it on its head. “I think Liam Gallagher is
making the best album of his entire career. That’s a big statement because he’s made some classic records - usually with his brother’s songs. But Beady Eye are very talented players and writers and are technically fantastic. “Gem Archer is an amazing engineer and producer. Both he and Andy Bell will produce records for other people at some point, I’m sure. They pretty much made the record this year in Gem’s studio in
his basement. They were writing all year and did what a lot of bands do: they wrote about nine or 10 songs and then said, ‘We’re ready to go with the album.’ “We encouraged them to keep
writing until August or September and lo and behold, they wrote 21
songs – and some of the later songs were the best ones. Then we had to find a producer. We wanted to get someone in who’d take [the album] from a 7/10 to a 9/10. “I was on a plane to New York
for a best friend’s wedding thinking, ‘Who can I call?’. Then I
thought of [TV On The Radio producer] Dave Sitek – who I associate with New York and great records. I sent him the demos and a link to the studio after being told he’d never leave his LA home. He gets straight back to me to say, ‘I’m there.’ “Now they’ve tracked 21 songs
in nine days [in London]. Sitek called at 6pm the other night to say, ‘I need a brass section. Get me a brass section now.’ Everyone
in the building was calling to sort it for him, and we did – within two hours it was recorded. It was a track that was never going to make the album, but Sitek completely changed the vibe and now it’s an amazing song. “They have a couple of songs
that are just unbelievable, mind- blowing. Everyone’s going to be shocked when they hear this record. It’s not like anything Liam’s ever recorded before.”
Eyes front: ‘It’s not like
anything Liam’s ever recorded’
Hot tip: TV On The Radio producer Dave Sitek ‘completely changed the vibe’ on the new Beady Eye songs
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