10 Music Week 12.12.14 THE BIG INTERVIEW BARRY DICKINS BEING BARRY
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He’s worked with everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Otis Redding, The Who and The Doors - and his modern day roster includes legends like Neil Young, Paul Simon, Tom Petty and Bob Dylan. After 50 years in the music business, ITB founder Barry Dickins has his quibbles with the modern industry - but the young agents he works with keep him at the top of his game
LIVE n BY TIM INGHAM
“I could be making all of these stories up, you know. No-one’s going to sue me - most of the people I’m taking about are f*cking dead!” Barry Dickins is statuesque, sweary - and solid
gold UK music industry royalty. A fair few agents in this business can claim to
have worked with some greats. But Barry? Barry’s worked with the greats. Try these for size: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, The Kinks, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Fleetwood Mac, Diana Ross, The Who, The Doors, Paul Simon, Dolly Parton, Randy Newman, James Taylor and Carole King; Dickins has booked gigs for them all. Little surprise he’s stuffed to the gills with insider tales that will put hairs on your chest and, very likely, whisky on your breath.
“You walk into some management companies in America and it’s like walking into an accountants. They’ve all got little glass cubicles. If they’re doing alright, they’ve got a plant as well” BARRY DICKINS, ITB
A suited, brawny Essex gent, Dickens offers the
sort of stern, wrist-swallowing handshake you’d expect from a man who’s made a living by going into battle for rock stars. He clearly doesn’t suffer fools gladly. In his game, you can’t afford to. The ITB co-founder’s career ticked over into
a remarkable half-century in 2014. But his life’s trajectory could have been very different had he not mangled his economics GCE at school. Although Dickins enjoyed the subject - good training for
balancing ITB’s books over the past four decades - he scored just 49% in his mock exam, aged 15. It was a sliver, one percent, away from acceptability. “The teachers said I couldn’t sit the main exam
- I was livid,” he explains today, sat in ITB’s West End offices, wearing the thick-rimmed glasses that have become something of a personal motif over the decades. “My old man reacted quite sensibly: either you go back to school, or you get a job.” Those who’ve studied music business family
trees will know that Barry’s ‘old man’ was none other that the revered Percy Dickins - founder of both the NME and what we now refer to as the Official UK Singles Chart. “I asked dad: ‘Can’t you get me any work in the
music business?’ He said no, so I got myself a job on the stock exchange and did reasonably well for six months. It was like going shopping; ‘walking the floor’ was essentially someone asking you, ‘Can you
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