FINALSAY... THEAFTERSHOW The music industry’s biggest names have the last word on their time in the biz... THIS WEEK: Emma Banks, co-head, CAA UK
Emma Banks won the Music Week Women In Music Awards Outstanding Contribution gong in 2015. Last week, she picked up the MITs Award. Here, the legendary CAA agent shares some of the knowledge she’s picked up along the way…
The difference between working for Kylie Minogue and Marilyn Manson is… “Smaller than you think! I love the fact that I work with Norah Jones, Katy Perry, Marilyn Manson and Kraftwerk, all of whom do quite different things. You learn so much from different genres of music and the way different people do things. A lot of the promoters are the same. Andy Copping at Live Nation promotes Metallica, Kylie and Kanye [West]. Three acts that have quite different fanbases but he does a great job on all of them. There’s no problem with being able to do that. It keeps me on my toes and keeps me excited and interested when I’m able in, the same week, to be booking Disturbed, Florence + The Machine, Foals and Norah Jones. There are some things you find out in one genre of music that you can absolutely use in another.”
Agents should work with labels rather than against them because…
“I work for the artist and what I get up in the morning for is to do the best thing for the artist. And the best thing for the artist is that the record label are able to stream more songs, sell more albums, do more of what they do to make the artist more famous, successful, popular, richer. I need to work with them to make sure that the live plot complements it, in the way that I would hope the recorded music [plot] complements what we’re doing. There has to be some give and take but we all come to a conclusion. If the tickets sell and the album’s doing well, then mission accomplished.”
I’m worried about Brexit because… “No one knows how it will affect the live industry. You hear the scare stories that there’s going to be a million trucks going into Dover and they won’t be able to move. In which case, all of my tours that are booked for April onwards are going to fall at the first hurdle. I don’t think there’s an agent, manager, artist or production manager that’s actually factored in, ‘Are there going to be new border checks?’ because nobody’s told us. I’m worried about it for the music business but
60 | Music Week 12.11.18
“I went to see Radiohead early on and I really didn’t get it...”
INTERVIEW: MARK SUTHERLAND
Laughing all the way to the Banks: Emma Banks
I’m worried about it for anything. If a band can’t get to Paris to do a gig, that means food can’t get somewhere else and medicine can’t get to places. There are far bigger issues that are going to come up.”
The biggest change I’ve seen in the industry is… “The digitisation of everything. We used to go on sale on a Thursday and people would line up and buy real paper tickets and, from the day you bought your ticket, you owned it and, if you lost it, you were screwed. Now, we have four pre-sales before you go on sale and you have to juggle with everything electronically. You can’t say progress is either good or bad a lot of the time, it is what it is and we deal with it. But it certainly brings additional challenges.”
The biggest mistake I ever made was… “Not signing Radiohead. I mean, who knows whether they would have wanted to be signed by me, but I went to see them at the Jericho Tavern in Oxford as On A Friday and I really didn’t get it. Then they went on to become one of my favourite acts and one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen. At least it’s a joy to just be able to enjoy them when I see them live now!”
The best advice I ever received was… “Probably to ‘shut up’!”
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PHOTO: Paul Harries
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