Fried & Justified: Hits, Myths, Break-Ups and Breakdowns in the Record Business 1978-98 by Houghton Mick & Houghton Mick

Author:Houghton, Mick & Houghton, Mick [Houghton, Mick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571336845
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2019-07-01T16:00:00+00:00

One of the few enjoyable things about Alan’s deal with WEA was being able to take refuge in Bill Drummond’s office. Bill was eighteen months into his A&R consultancy role and had his own office in WEA’s Broadwick Street HQ. He was insistent that as an A&R man his office should have a proper piano, an electric guitar plus small amp, an old-fashioned desk, a sturdy chair and tea-making facilities. Once Bill entered and sat down there was little room for anybody else, but in his dreams one day the new Gerry Goffin and Carole King would walk in and play him a song as good as ‘It Might as Well Rain Until September’. Bill saw something he liked in McGee, even though their approaches to music-making were completely different. Alan enthused all the time, while Bill was inclined to think everything was shit, including most of the Creation records Alan played him. The liaison brought about a solo album by Bill that was as far removed from Creation’s tinny, reverb-heavy 45s as you could get. ‘I thought the guy was probably a genius,’ said Alan in Creation Stories , ‘and he was offering to cover the cost himself. There was nothing to lose. We put it out, it got great reviews, sold fuck all, but I was proud of that album.’ It was probably the best PR job I did at Creation.

On 21 July 1986, in the sort of self-mythologising prose that soon became his forte, Bill sent a letter to this music-business friends and associates, saying that having reached the age of thirty-three and a third, he was calling time. ‘In the past nine years, I gave everything I could, and at times some drops too much, and to those who wanted more, I’m sorry. It wasn’t for the giving.’ The nine years in question had begun in May 1977 with Bill forming Big in Japan, ‘a band that had no right to be’. He said he was leaving behind two gifts: ‘The first, Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, the only band that can save us from the future, the second is yet to come, and in between was the greatest Album ever made.’

During his two-year stint as corporate man there’d been a resurgence in the Drummond/Balfe axis, which still occasionally operated as a production team, but it was their publishing enterprise, Zoo Music, that proved most fruitful. While Bill had relinquished management altogether, Dave Balfe now had his own label, Food Records, which had links to EMI, and he had moved into management. As well as Strawberry Switchblade, he was soon managing Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, another Zoo Music acquisition. To many people’s surprise, they also picked up the publishing for the Proclaimers, which would turn out to be a nice little earner thanks to perennial hits such as ‘Letter from America’ and ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’. I understood what Bill saw in them. He has very broad, often catholic taste in music.

Balfey

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