this young ginger rapper from Suffolk. There’s nothing better than [breaking] a new domestic act. I remember he did three Barfly gigs back-to-back in one night, there was this huge line went down the road. At the time nobody [in the media] had come to see him really. So rather than plug the record, we got the footage of the queue of people and we sent that. At the end of the night there was police, ambulance, fire brigade, it was chaos but good chaos. It’s easy now but when we started with Ed, it actually did take some work. I’m not trying to big up our part, but there were certain areas and people that weren’t convinced that Ed was the next big thing. So seeing him go from the Barfly to the Wembleys or Madison Square Garden… Those are the things that you’ll remember when you finish doing the job, just seeing a little acorn growing into this monstrous thing. Having that connection with one of the biggest stars in the world, because you’re in that inner circle and they trust you, it’s a good feeling.”
When did you realise you were pretty good at this plugging game? “(Laughs) What’s the time now? Nah, it took a while because it’s really all about the records and there were times when you doubted yourself. The chairman of RCA used to send round a league table of the record labels and we were always in the bottom three. It was like relegation. I used to fucking hate it, it used to really drive me mad, infuriate me, but we just didn’t have the records to get out of it. Then I went to MCA and we then started really doing well, we had 13 or 14 records on the Radio 1 playlist. So I made sure I sent that to a certain person and said, ‘You still doing your league table? Maybe it was the records rather than us!’ I got great pleasure from that.”
So what’s the secret of your promo success? “I don’t really want to share it. I’m not going to get the magic book out! I don’t feel there’s a formula, we just do it how we do it. I couldn’t pull a scroll out and go, ‘Do this’ – and, if there was, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you!”
Winning the Music Week Award 10 years out of 11 can’t be just down to the records though, can it? “People obviously like how we do it. We’re very truthful, we’re respectful, we know what we’re talking about, we have a mixture of experience and youth. I’m glad they still love what we’re doing. There’ll probably be a few years when we don’t win it. But every year we don’t, it’ll make me hungrier to come back and win it the following year.”
Meanwhile, your acceptance speeches have become fairly notorious…
“The speeches are not really planned, they’re off the cuff. I try and behave myself but sometimes I let myself go a little bit. Sometimes I’ve been very drunk and shouting the odds but most of it is bravado, it’s more for fun. I want people to give me some stick, because it makes it lively.
Marvel and DC: Christian with (left) Ava Max and (right) Stormzy
This year I banged on a bit and I didn’t realise how well it went down. I had more people talking about the speech than congratulations on the award! My phone lit up like a Christmas tree, the following day, even people who are fairly straight were saying ‘Oh my God’. Someone sent me the Music Week transcripts and when I read it back, to be honest it made me laugh. Stormzy texted me within 30 seconds of winning it, saying ‘Big D, you’ve won your crown back’, so the ego gets a nice little stroke. It gets quite hungry the ego, it needs a snack every 15 minutes these days. A little nibble.”
“Big D is a music industry legend. I’ll vouch for that any day of the week”
STORMZY Did you mind being heckled?
“No. If I was them I’d be getting frustrated too. I understand the frustration. Most of it is light-hearted, most of us pluggers get on very well. They always genuinely send a text through saying, ‘Nice one, well deserved’. I’m sure behind closed doors people are going, ‘What are they up to?’ but we’re not up to anything. That’s the great thing about it!”
Do you ever get in trouble for the things you say? “No, not really. I think they knew I was joking. It’s tongue in cheek, it’s a laugh and it got a reaction. Max phoned me in the morning, and said, ‘I heard you did a lively speech’. But it was more about congratulations. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand, that’s not how I work. I did go through a stage of being a bit lively on Twitter. I even got a text from Ed once saying, ‘Damo, my God, what’s happened, who’s upset you?’ I’m not doing it for attention, I was probably over-refreshed and being a bit silly. One time a Radio 1 DJ texted me saying, ‘I’m just about to go on stage in front of a massive crowd and I’m scared but I’m reading your tweets and I’m absolutely pissing myself. You’re helping to relax me, whatever you’re going on about’. If I’d named someone and been mean, I’d feel terrible afterwards because I’m not that person. But people were pissing me off and I knew that people were following me, so they probably got the message that they were pissing me off and to stop!”
How close are you to the radio DJs, TV presenters and producers that you deal with?
Christian’s soldiers: Damian Christian with his Atlantic team picking up PPL airplay prizes
musicweek.com
“Most of it is a very good professional relationship. If you were asking one of them now, some of them would say, ‘God I love him’ and some would say, ‘He’s an absolute knob’. We need each other; they need to hear about the new
25.11.19 Music Week | 19
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