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12.12.14 Music Week 11


go to M&S, Tesco and Sainsbury’s and see who does the best deal?’ After a while, I thought, ‘Why the hell am I doing this? I hate it.’” Barry’s growing love of pop music prompted


him to once again pester his dad to open up his little black book. Percy reluctantly invited his son into the belly of the beast, linking him with 1960s impresario Roy Tempest. Barry’s path towards music industry folklore was set. “Roy was a ‘colourful character’ - that’s


probably the best way to put it,” chuckles Barry. “When I started with him, I did everything: answered the phone, made the tea, booked the bands, cleaned the office - the lot.” Within a couple of years, in his late teens,


Barry was taking Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix out on the road across the UK - living the dream and lapping up every wild night on offer. These days, aged 67, he’s less frenetic, but no less enamoured with the heroes on his roster, including Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, Jamiroquai, Billy Idol and Neil Young, who he’s represented since 1968. Elsewhere within ITB, Barry’s daughter


Lucy has forged her own reputation as a globally respected agent, one adept at taking acts from dirt bars to stadiums: she’s worked with Adele, Mumford & Sons and Jamie T since the beginning of their careers. Barry’s son Jonathan, meanwhile, is one of the most celebrated artist and producer managers in the world - he also looks after Adele and Jamie T, as well as London Grammar, Paul Epworth and Rick Rubin. In other words, when you chew the fat with


Barry, there’s plenty of industry gristle to get your teeth into. But you’d be a fool to stick to business - and fail to ask him what Otis, Jimi, Jim and the rest were like when the stage lights went down. Music Week celebrates 50 years with a legend.


You’ve worked with a litany of all-time greats. Whose music has blown you away the most? I’ve got to be very careful, because I still represent many of them. My favourite act in this lifetime is Neil Young. I love him. The man just writes truly great songs. I’ve just been on a tour with him - he’s older than me, 68, but he’s still one of the younger acts I represent [laughs]. You watch him on stage and the energy he’s got is unbelievable, he’s like a 30 year-old. He played Blowin’ In The Wind on this tour - written by another one of my clients - and I turned to his manager and went: ‘Why’s he doing Blowin’ In The Wind?! It’s not like he hasn’t written a few decent songs himself…’ I love Needle & The Damage Done. Neil tours different ways: he does the Crazy Horse stuff, with all the feedback and the noise, but I prefer him just solo acoustic. It’s magical. He’s my favourite, but Dylan’s a genius, Jamiroquai are great live, ZZ Top really entertain me… I could go on and on. The one I’m really finding entertaining right now is Billy Idol. In Germany he’s doing 5,000 - 9,000 people a show. It’s brilliant - a proper Vegas rock’n’roll show. But good God, does he entertain. He gives it his all. I don’t represent her anymore, but for a long time Diana Ross was a client of mine. She’s very professional. That’s all I’ve got to say about her; very professional [laughs].


Your first job in the industry was working with Roy Tempest. What did he teach you? He was one of the great salesmen - unbelievable. He found a legal loophole: he went to America and found these guys who were postmen, who sang in


WHEN BARRY MET… OTIS REDDING


“I worked for Otis Redding when I was what we’d now call a ‘junior agent’. I had to go out on [tour] with him. I’ll always remember it, it must have been around ’67. My boss back then was a guy called Tito Burns, and I’ll never forget when he said: ‘I want you to go on the road.’ “So off I went on a bus with Otis Redding. It was weird,


I’ve never seen anything like it - the tour manager fined people who were late. No wonder the band were so bloody brilliant! If they didn’t show up on time, either than bus went without them, or they had to pay up - sometimes both. It was very old school - it must have been how Duke Ellington or Count Basie toured. “I loved working for Otis Redding, after I was a mod I became a soul boy and I just adored his music. I asked him for an autograph once and he wrote: ‘To Barry, Respect, Otis Redding.’ How f*cking cool is that? “I’ll always remember when we want to some gig in


Farnborough. Otis turns to me and says, ‘Hey man, where’s the John?’ I was a kid, 17 or 18, and I was like: ‘John? John who?’ So he says: ‘You know man, the bathroom?’ ‘Eh? The bathroom? We’re a in a club Otis - what do you want to take a bath for?’ After about ten minutes we worked out he needed a piss.”


a club at night. He brought them to England and called them The Fabulous Temptations. That’s what it said on the poster. And so long as you billed it as that, you got away with the fact they weren’t the real Temptations. A story I heard was that, down the line, he booked a [fake] BB King. Someone asked this bloke on stage how Lucille was, and he said: ‘Yeah, she’s fine, she’s at home.’ Lucille was BB King’s bloody guitar! That was when the trick came a bit unstuck. Roy’s in the property business now. A great character.


What makes a good agent? It’s not as easy as people think, that’s for sure. It’s all about positioning. Every act that comes in here says: ‘I want to play Glastonbury.’ Well guess what mate, so does everybody else. What’s the point of playing Glastonbury at 11am when you’ve been raving till 4am the night before and are still pissed out of your head? Why do it? If you’re building up, if you can sell tickets to 400 people [on a usual night], then start doing it. But don’t go on at 11am. That’s being a good agent: turning things down for the right slot - even taking less money for the right slot. The easiest thing in this business is to talk a great game. Basically, if someone comes into your office, especially young managers who haven’t been around the block, you can just tell ‘em what they want to hear. I try and tell people the truth. Sometimes they


like it and sometimes they don’t. But I always say to my agents, don’t promise something you can’t deliver. If I can help get someone on a show they can’t do themselves, no problem. But don’t say to a band without a record deal: ‘We’ll get you Reading, we’ll get you Glastonbury, we’ll get T In The Park, we’ll get you this and that.’


You’re talking about patiently building someone’s career long-term. Well look at my roster! I’ve also worked with people like James Taylor, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Cat Stevens - you look at how long these guys have been around and you think they must have something about them. It’s a different time now. I


don’t think we’ll see that kind of artist again. I go through Music Week’s charts analysis and the one I always go for is the [sales figures]. [Barry names act] were at No.7 the other week with 8,000 record sales. That’s terrible! No.7! I get people calling up: ‘Hey, we’re No.27!’ I think: ‘What did you sell, then? 2,000 copies?’


What’s it like still being such a vital part of the modern music industry? It’s a different game now. But back then I was a teenager, around the same age as the artists. It’s a totally different experience as you get older. I remember about ten years ago I saw [an act] backstage doing a line of coke. They turned round, saw me, and were like [gasps in shock]. Now I’ve never done coke - I’ve smoke a few spliffs in my time, but never coke - but I said: ‘Hold on. It’s not like this is the first time I’ve ever seen this mate.’ In the ‘70s, they were all on it - well-known managers. I remember telling them lots of times, ‘When you’re straight again, call me.’ Because they’d always be coked up, shouting and screaming. People don’t do that so much now. I suppose I used to shout and scream a bit, be an arsehole. I don’t do that now either. I’d probably have a heart attack [laughs].


What about the modern record industry? There’s just three big record companies now. How sad. Most of these people who started the big labels did so for the love of music: Chris Blackwell at Island; Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic, Jac Holzman at Elektra, Alpert & Moss at A&M; believe it or not Mo Ostin was an accountant who loved music, and he started Warner Bros! It wasn’t a corporate thing, and they gave people a chance. You know, Supertramp had four albums that sold sod all! Suddenly, after all that, Breakfast In America becomes one of the biggest albums of all time. Today they wouldn’t get to the fourth album. They’d be lucky to get to their first, frankly. It makes me laugh when people ask labels: ‘What’s the marketing campaign?’ Well, if Radio 1 don’t play it, or you haven’t got the others on board, then there ain’t no marketing campaign. It’s f*cked.


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