K-Tel: 40 Dynamic Years

Something that was lost in the CD revolution thirty years ago was the beauty of the record label. Pye, Decca, Vertigo, Polydor, true design classics. Think of the Beatles and you think of black paper labels with a Parlophone pound-sign logo and the big 45 on the right to denote you hadn't just bought a shrunken 78. Blondie's Heart Of Glass could only ever be on the powder blue Chrysalis label with a butterfly flapping effetely in the corner.

Between the ages of seven and fourteen, though, the only label that counted for me was a murky brown colour with two white curvy lines, something that no one could mistake for the work of Barnett Newman or Peter Saville. It was the K-Tel label, home of the hits, usually 20 but sometimes as many as 24. For a boy on 20p a week pocket money, K-Tel was the only label that could give me any hope of keeping up with the kids at school whose dads bought them a hit single or two (usually on flashy labels like Bell or RAK) every saturday. So every three months or so, a new K-Tel compilation would appear with a snappy generic title - Music Power, Disco Rocket, Star Party - and for around three quid my collection would be bolstered with anything from Cockney Rebel and Pilot to War's Low Rider (cool) or Pussycat's Mississippi (not so). Philly soul, novelty, hard rock or whatever David Dundas was meant to be, it was all pop music to K-Tel. They were the kings, they dictated my record collection. Aged 12, more than anything in the world, I wanted to work for K-Tel.

The man whose job I coveted was Don Reedman, an Australian who was in at the beginning and later made himself wealthy with the Classic Rock and Hooked On Classics series. "From 1972 we were doing an album every couple of weeks" he remembers. "I was allowed to do what I wanted. I genuinely liked everything I did - Gladys Knight, Perry Como, I loved them all. We were kids having fun." So it really was as much fun as I'd imagined. I don't tell him that I used to invent compilations of my own and send them in to K-Tel hoping to steal his job. But, with a limited knowledge of non-hits, I could never have conceived Reedman's personal pride and joy: "Kenny Everett's World's Worst Record Show was a great one. We pressed it on brown vinyl. It looked like sick."

The company name doesn't quite have the home counties ring of His Master's Voice, and its roots, unsurprisingly, are in north America. The 'K' in K-Tel is one Philip Kives, a Winnipeg salesman of the Coloner Parker school. He began hawking kitchenware on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. "It was tough. I thought there had to be an easier way of earning a living. I came back to Winnipeg and Teflon pans had just come out, I bought some TV time on the local channel so I could demonstrate to a whole world of people at one time. I put the product in a department store. People saw the commercial and came to see me at the store."

The amiable Kives makes K-Tel's success sound so simple and entirely random. "I used to demonstrate at fairs. And some Australian people came up to me once and told me how nice their country was -  I said 'Gee whizz, I've always wanted to go to Australia anyhow.' So when the fair was over I put five gross of knives on the airplane. Ten days later I was on TV in Newcastle, Australia, and it just took off. Five months later I'd sold a million knives and I made a dollar a knife."

His cutlery supplier, jealous of his success, "told me I was getting too big and cut me off -  Seymour Popeil was his name, king of the kitchen gadgets. No more knives, slicers, choppers... I was born on a farm and I knew country music. I had to do something else, I thought why not do a music album? I thought it'd be a one-off. Everybody said 'that won't work.' Now all the major labels do compilation albums, but mine was the first."

It is forty years since Kives gave the world  25 Great Country Artists Singing Their Original Hits - the title was unwieldy but it was the first ever TV record and, in Winnipeg, it sold like billy-o.

Kives first hit Britain at the start of the seventies and used the same technique, taking an ad "on a local TV station in the north" - possibly Border - announcing that the Miracle Brush was on sale in the local Woolworths and Co-Op. Again, it sold out in hours the day after the advert. Now Kives decided to set up a British arm of K-Tel Records. Don Reedman had a twin brother who ran the label in Australia, which seemed a good enough reason to put Don in charge of the London office. His first project was 20 Dynamic Hits: it had the trademark, eye-stinging K-Tel cover with cut-out monochrome pictures of the artistes surrounded by multi-coloured circles. It looked like it had been put together by a kid with the full range of Letraset and four Caran Dache felt-tips. For me at least, this was part of the appeal. My dad bought 20 Dynamic Hits. So did three million other people. Out of the box, K-Tel UK outsold T Rex, Bowie, Carole King and Lieutenant Pigeon - they had 1972's best-selling album bar none.


Ask anyone involved with the label what their favourite K-Tel record is and they will reply, unswervingly, "the one that sold the most."  Colin Ashby, the company's sales manager in the late seventies, had "come from the food industry. We were marketeers who happened to be marketing black plastic.There was no desire to win prizes or ad campaign of the year awards, no desire at all."
Ashby was with the company when ITV was taken off the air by industrial action in 1979. "Our TV spend in the seventies was as big as Heinz. The strike was from August to October. We lost money, it was disastrous, cut off our arms and legs. Funny thing was Heinz beans and Crosse And Blackwell Beans' sales weren't affected at all, and they came to a gentlemen's agreement that neither would do beans ads anymore."

Selling records like tins of beans was, astonishingly, beneath the major labels in the seventies. These days, Now That's What I Call Musicis single-handedly keeping the industry afloat - in K-Tel's heyday they were there for artist development, high culture, prog rock. It seems unbelievable now that they would license their biggest hits to an entrepreneurial company on the fume-choked Western Avenue and watch them sell a million records every time. "Oh, it was pure snobbery" says Colin Ashby. Rather than dirty their hands in what was called secondary marketing, "the labels took a 16% royalty on the retail price. We were seen as a necessary evil."

The TV ads were the ultimate hard sell - they would always cry "out now on K-Tel!" Thus the label cornered the baby boomer market, the six-albums-a-year buyers who also owned Bridge Over Troubled Water, something by Neil Diamond, and a Music Of Greece/Spain/package holiday souvenir album. It became a name that everybody recognised. "At every party I went to for years, as soon as I said I worked for K-Tel that was it. Everybody's got an idea for a compilation" groans Ashby.  "'Why don't you do a brass band album?' they'd say. 'I'd buy it!'"

In North America, meanwhile, Philip Kives was still recording and starring in his own commercials as he had back in Winnipeg in 1962, a live shoot with a hands-on demonstration of the product. He would appear with the artist holding the record. Some acts were more fun to work with than others.
"Elton John, he was nice to do business with. And the singing barber, Perry Como - very, very nice. Liberace took to me to his house and made dinner for me and my wife. Then you turned around and had to deal with a guy like Sammy Davis Junior. He could only see in one eye. Did you know that? I didn't know that. He was talking to me but looking elsewhere and I thought he must have been talking to somebody else. And he screamed at me 'I'm TALKING to you! ANSWER ME!' Gee. He was tough."

K-Tel's boom years came to an abrupt halt in 1983. Richard Branson had more of the barrow boy about him than his major label rivals. He came up with the first Now That's What I Call Music, spent a pound per sale on promotion (K-tel aimed at around 15p a record) and created a brand. K-Tel just couldn't compete. Janie Webber joined the company at its peak in 1979: "I remember, it was our weekly meeting and someone brought in this record sleeve with a pig on it and I thought, 'What the fuck is that?" Colin Ashby: "Now That's What I Call Music? I thought wowee, that's a big title. We'd never have taken a chance on a title as long as that."

Squeezed out, K-Tel had ceased making records by the late eighties, and reverted to its original purpose - selling kitchen gadgets. Janie Webber oversaw its rennaissance from an industrial estate in Greenford, placing £3.99 cd's in supermarket dump bins and doing quite nicely on impulse purchases. Cutely, she joined the company because she was obsessed with making home-made compilations as a child. "I had a sign on my bedroom door that said 'Keep out - recording in progress.' Now I run the company. I feel a bit like Victor Kayam."

When you get right down to it, pop is pop and K-Tel were purest pop: Ultravox may still whine about the injustice of Vienna being kept off the top by Shaddap You Face, but when you are sandwiched between Racey and the Gibson Brothers on a K-Tel comp there's no place for pretension or revisionism. It may not be Motown but Philip Kives' K-Tel inadvertently produced dozens of perfectly formed time machines. Your local charity shop is waiting to transport you.

An appreciation of Del Shannon

It's the ultimate fairground anthem, the first record you'd look for on a Wurlitzer jukebox in a forgotten suburban caff. Del Shannon's Runaway is all energy and mystery, from the densely thrummed opening chords through its falsetto hook ("wah-wah-wonder") to the eerie, space-organ solo. The lyric is beyond melancholy - it is harrowing, filled with dread and paranoia; the runaway girl may not even be alive. David Lynch is surely a fan.

It was the kind of record you could build a career on and Del Shannon didn't disappoint. The existential angst of Runaway became a template that he was still using at the far end of the decade on the ghostlike Colorado Rain. He couldn't write any other way - the fear and the demons in Shannon's music echoed the mind of its maker.

In the beginning he was Charles Westover and he was from Battle Creek, Michigan. Two events shaped his future: when he bought his first electric guitar he practised in the bathroom, amp perched on the toilet lid, and discovered he liked the rumbling acoustics; a little later he asked a girl called Karen to the high school prom, but she dumped him for another guy. Del  was so cut up that he would still talk about this years later. He was drafted in the mid-fifties, married Shirley, got a job in a carpet store, renamed himself Del Shannon in honour of a local wrestler. By night he played rock'n'roll covers in The Big Little Show Band at Battle Creek.

So far, so small town. Shannon was already in his mid-twenties when a college kid from Kalamazoo called Max Crook joined the band. Crook brought with him a home-made, three-legged proto-synth that he called a "musitron". Straight away, they began writing great songs. One was called Runaway, the lyric penned by Shannon on the sly while working at the carpet store. It exploded in spring 1961, and became an international number one. In the anodyne Bobby Rydell/Craig Douglas era, the intense, square-jawed Shannon cut a heroic figure, and was swiftly elevated to the level of Roy Orbison, Dion and Gene Pitney - rock solid names, built to last.

Invigorated by stardom he followed Runaway with two fabulously nasty rockers. Hats Off To Larry again featured a Max Crook solo, but this was a spiteful riposte to an ex who has been ditched by her new beau. So Long Baby was possibly the most relentless, tuneless Top 10 hit of the early sixties, fuelled entirely by bitter glee - "I've got news for you, I was untrue too!" Crook had left to make a solo single (the deathless Twistin' Ghost; check his phenomenal Meek-like The Snake, released under the name Maximilian) and his musitron was replaced on So Long Baby by what sounds like a giant electronic kazoo. While his profile dipped in the States, Del's hits in Europe continued unabated. The loopy Swiss Maid (Question: Will she ever find true love, yodel-lay? Answer: No.) reached number 2 in the UK but failed to even make the Hot 100 in '62; Little Town Flirt was big enough here to have been a prime influence on Merseybeat (imagine The Searchers singing it); Cry Myself To Sleep was unsubtly re-written by Elton John as Crocodile Rock.

All these hits, all the strength in that lumberjack voice, and still Shannon was riddled with insecurities. Musically this manifested itself in lame soundalike sequels (Two Kinds Of Teardrops, too jolly by half; Kelly on the flipside was far better) or songs that clearly aped his contemporaries. Sue's Gonna Be Mine is The Four Seasons' Sherry, and Dion would surely have sued had Shannon's Mary Jane sold in quantity. These singles came in an eighteen month barren patch which coincided with the first beat boom - Del may well have been the first act to chart with a Lennon/McCartney song (From Me To You) in the US, but he felt the chill wind from the Mersey in '63 and '64 like pretty much every other American act. He sought solace in whisky.

And that might have been that had he not ditched the covers (Handy Man, Do You Wanna Dance), worked out why Runaway was so original and successful, and rediscovered his groove with Keep Searchin' at the end of '64. "Gotta find a place to hide with my baby by my side" - the lyric was even bleaker and more oblique than Runaway, the sound newly toughened by the Brit beat influence. The cry of the fugitive, a possible abductor with his (underage?) girl who's "been hurt so much, they treat her mean and cruel", Keep Searchin' ends with a desperate, beautiful falsetto wail of release. It is quite possibly his best record and a deserved Transatlantic top tenner.

From this point on, Shannon rarely stumbled until his semi-retirement as a performer in '69. Keep Searchin' begat an even more paranoiac sequel in Stranger In Town where a private detective, or maybe a hitman, gets thrown into the equation. On Break Up in '65 he's so wracked and tortured that he can't even convey his fears in words, resigning himself to losing his girl -  though he seems to have zero evidence this is about to happen. The single was a flop (Stranger In Town turned out to be his last UK hit) and Del was devastated. He took boxes of the single and threw them angrily into a Michigan river.

The toughness of singles like Break Up and the tinnitus-inducing Move It On Over betrayed a Stones influence. Coincidentally, Shannon was a heavy hero to Andrew Loog Oldham and the two got together for the Home And Away album in '67. A record of full baroque beauty, it was shelved at the time, probably because none of its accompanying singles were hits. Aided by Immediate stalwarts Billy Nichols and Twice As Much, and with Oldham pulling every Spectorian stunt from the box, songs like Cut And Come Again and He Cheated recast Del as a black orchid for the flower generation. It's a truly wonderful record which was finally released as a stand-alone album a few years back on Zonophone. The Further Adventures Of Charles Westover from the following year is almost as good - deeper and eerier, with the gorgeous single Gemini ("Oh, how I'd love to understand you") showing how Del felt locked out of the love-in, detached from the sunshine people while still producing masterful records that they would most likely love if they ever heard them.

Radio and press, though, would barely touch an oldie like Del Shannon and by 1969 he was working more as a producer. Most successfully he revived Bacharach and David's bluest hit, the Shirelles' Baby It's You, for a group called Smith and scored a US Top 10 hit in '69. A couple of solo singles on Dunhill were taken from a half-finished album, issued in its entirety on a Bear Family box set in 2004. One, Colorado Rain, formed a neat circle in its tale of a runaway hippie girl who flits into Shannon's life via a sinister piano motif, only to leave again just as unexpectedly.

The Bear Family set contained a bountifully illustrated book and eight discs to tell the Del Shannon story and, truthfully, it's more than most people would need. Mid-sixties albums like Total Commitment and This Is My Bag (great but misleading titles) are one-take, hits-of-the-day compilations that barely reflect the quality of Shannon's singles. The two discs of demos and home recordings, though, are fascinating: evidently he turned to country (Hank Williams in particular) in the way that Elvis turned to gospel once he was out of the spotlight.

The story can be condensed inside three minutes: if Runaway is too played out for you, try That's The Way Love Is, a flop single from late '63. It comes on like a conventional love song, with girlie back-ups straight off a Paris Sisters session. Then Del starts to remember his misery, starts to tear chunks out of it. Before the end he's shaking, smashing things, putting his fist threw doors and still the pain won't go away. Even Elvis and the Big O couldn't cut you this deeply. And Del Shannon was truly in their league, a heavyweight who should be remembered with the same awe.

An interview with Andrew Loog Oldham

The larger-than-life manager is one of my less-favoured pop archetypes: I think of Colonel Parker putting Elvis through the Hollywood mill, or Peter Grant fleecing Led Zeppelin fans who could only afford one 45 a week. Andrew Loog Oldham took some cues from Larry Parnes, but crucially based himself more on a fictional character - Johnny Jackson from Wolf Mankowitz's Expresso Bongo. Maybe this why the Rolling Stones he created, virtually from scratch, were so much more exciting and genuinely dangerous than the proto-corporate rock act they were from '68 onwards. All right. In his words, and his own capitals, say 'ello to ALO.

BS: Do you think that, like the Stones, you were “born in England, made in America”?
ALO: I WAS MADE BY AN AMERICAN. THE GENT I’M DOING THE E-BOOK WITH LOCATED A PHOTO OF MY FATHER’S (LT. ANDREW LOOG) GRAVE IN BELGIUM. HE WAS FROM LOUISIANA, SO IN SOME WAYS I WAS MADE IN AMERICA IN MORE WAYS THAN THE DIMMER TWINS.

It seems that when you started out working for the likes of Mark Wynter, you were more interested in the minders/managers than the artists, almost saw them as more romantic than their charges. Did you get to meet Brian Hyland, for instance, or form any opinion of him? Or was his “show-me-the-money Jerry Maguire via Damon Runyon” manager of far more interest to you?
THE MANAGER… THE MANAGER…. A GUY NAMED SAM GORDON, WHO WAS A BLACK SUITED AGENT FROM WILLIAM MORRIS SENT OVER TO MIND THE HYLAND STORE. BRIAN HYLAND WAS NICE ENOUGH IN A JIMMY CLANTON/MARK WYNTER SORT OF WAY, BUT IT WAS SAM GORDON THAT INTERESTED ME. PURE OFFICED UP TONY CURTIS IN “MR. CORY”

I think you met Joe Meek a couple of times (Tony Calder once told me that you went to Holloway Road in ’64 by which time he “didn’t look like a man who could buy you lunch”). How important do you think he was in early 60s UK pop? And did he attempt to make a move on you? (You don’t have to answer that last one).
HE WAS TERRIFYING. ALL THE HOMOSEXUALS I HAD MET THUS FAR HAD BEEN OBVIOUSLY INSANE BUT WELL-MANNERED. JOE WAS A LOOSE OOZI. I THINK HIS INFLUENCE IS OVERBLOWN. MAINLY BECAUSE HE’S BRITISH, NUTS AND DEAD,. IT’S REALLY “TELSTAR” AND “HAVE I THE RIGHT?” AS FAR AS HITS GO. THE JOHN LEYTON RECORDS WERE AWFUL. THEY WERE MADE HITS BY AN EARLY TRIANGULAR BRIT VELVET MAFIA. IF MEEK HAD LIVED ANTHONY HOPKINS COULD HAVE SOURCED HIM IN HIS HANNIBAL LECTER RESEARCH. WHAT HELPED HIM GET BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION WAS THE END OF THE RECORD COMPANIES CD RUN, WHEN THEY ALL WENT BOX SET BALLISTIC. MY WORK, THANK GOD, IS PROTECTED BECAUSE IT WAS WITH THE ROLLING STONES.

How would you stack up Joe Meek’s contribution to record production alongside Phil Spector’s?
RECENTLY SOMEONE TOLD ME THAT, SHORTLY BEFORE HIS DEATH, JACK NITZSCHE WAS ASKED ABOUT PHIL’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE SONGS HE GOT A THIRD OF. NATCH THE MAJORITY OF FOLKS CHOSE TO BELIEVE THAT PHIL JUST TOOK A THIRD COZ HE COULD. I MEAN, HOW MUCH CAN YOU ADD TO GOFFIN & KING; MANN & WEIL; GREENWICH & BARRY? IT WOULD SEEM A LOT. JACK, TO HIS CREDIT, COZ HE WAS A BITTER SOD FOR SO MUCH OF HIS LIFE, LEFT NO DOUBT THAT WHEN PHIL PUT HIS MARK ON A SONG IT IMPROVED. THAT’S THE DIFFERENCE. A SONGMEISTER. AS REGARDS MEEK IT’S NOT EVEN CLOSE. THE IDEA IS TO BE UNIVERSAL…..

How would you rank Nik Cohn as a writer? (I think, at his best, there isn’t a better pop writer – he translates the sound of Rag Doll or Da Doo Ron Ron or The Last Time into prose). Do you still see him? Am I entirely wrong to think of you as kindred spirits?
I LOVE NIK COHN AND HIS WRITING. THE ESSAYS IN “20TH CENTURY DREAMS” AND “TRIKSTA” ARE BRILLIANT. “TRIKSTA” IS SO GOOD, SO DARING. HE REMINDS ME OF DUSTY SPRINGFIELD, A STRAIGHT AND JEWISH VERSION. I MEAN, HE CAME FROM IRELAND, DID HE NOT? OR LIKE PETER O’TOOLE DID HE REALLY COME FROM LEEDS? WHATEVER. HE CAME INTO OUR LIVES AT AN IMPORTANT TIME, AS AN IMPORTANT VOICE. I HAD TEA WITH HIM JUST OVER A YEAR AGO. WE WERE THINKING ABOUT TREADING THE BOARDS TOGETHER BUT NOBODY WOULD PAY FOR THE EXCESS BAGGAGE.

You talk about meeting Ken Hughes, who directed Gurney Slade. But what did you make of Anthony Newley? I’d have thought his career path – a London boy involved in music, acting, TV, working with Lionel Bart, marrying a film star, going to Hollywood – would have seemed quite a desirable blueprint to you.
ANTHONY NEWLEY WAS GREAT AUDITIONING TWINS, I ASK YOU. “IDOL ON PARADE” – LOVED IT. HELL, I EVEN LIKED MARTY WILDE IN “JET STORM” BECAUSE IT MEANT “POP PEOPLE” WERE GETTING A LEG UP ON THE OTHER SIDE. AWFUL FILM. STANLEY BAKER, SAW IT AT THE ESSOLDO KILBURN. I WANTED MY MONEY BACK. “BEAT GIRL” WITH ADAM FAITH AND MUSIC BY JOHN BARRY WAS THE GUV’NER. NEWLEY WAS STRANGE, I AM NOT SURE IF IT WAS WORK OR MARRIAGE (JOAN COLLINS?) THAT TOOK HIM TO HOLLYWOOD BUT HE NEVER HAD ANOTHER ORIGINAL THOUGHT. HIM AND DAVID HEMMINGS. THE LAST TIME I SAW HIM WAS WITH DON ARDEN. WE WENT UP TO LAS VEGAS TO SEE NEWLEY AND BURT BACHARACH. IT WAS A WONDERFUL NIGHT OF SONG. LISTEN, IF I’D BEEN BORN WHERE NEWLEY CAME FROM I MIGHT HAVE SAID YES TO HOLLYWOOD.

Were you jealous of Andrew Wickham following his surfer boy dream and going to work for Lou Adler? Kim Fowley describes him as a “genius” – would you agree? I have to say I’m impressed by an old Etonian signing Joni Mitchell and becoming head of Warners in Nashville. And he got to hang out with Michelle Phillips.
BEING DESCRIBED AS ANYTHING BY KIM FOWLEY IS DANGEROUS LET ALONE “GENIUS”. ONE, I NEVER WANTED TO SURF AND TWO, HE WORKED FOR ME. PLEASE! MY ENVY WAS ABSTRACT, LIKE ABOUT THE FACEL-VEGA I KNOW NOW I WILL NEVER HAVE. I DON’T THINK WE HAD ENVY IN THE 60′S; THAT ONE CAME WITH THE 70′S. ANDY’S SUCCESS I REGARD AS A CLUE TO HOW GOOD TONY CALDER WAS AT SPOTTING TALENT. I’M TOLD THEY NOW GO TO FUNERALS TOGETHER, TO SAY GOODBYE TO THE TALENT, I SUPPOSE. GOD BLESS HIS REIGN AT WARNERS – A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT AND THREE BALLS IN THE OCEAN FOR HIS LEAVING US AND FOLLOWING HIS DREAM.

Can you recall some of the times you spent with Pete Meaden? It sounds like he had a major effect on you. Were you fast friends, or did you see him later on in the 60s? He seems like a tragic figure to me, though I know he’s a hero to suburban mods.
PETER MEADEN. SOMEBODY HAS TO OPEN THE DOOR AND LET YOU IN. MARY QUANT AND HER PARTNERS, ALEXANDER PLUNKET GREENE AND ARCHIE MCNAIR DID THAT; RONNIE SCOTT AND PETE KING DID THAT AND SO DID PETER MEADEN. WE WERE FAST FRIENDS, HE HAD THE LOOK OF LUNACY I RECOGNIZED. WE FELL OUT ONCE I HAD THE STONES, OUR FRIENDSHIP DID NOT SURVIVE THAT. HE WAS NOT TRAGIC, HE JUST SAW TOO MUCH, TOOK TOO MUCH, TOO SOON. A MORE PERFECT FRIEND YOU COULD NOT IMAGINE. THE MIND, THE VISIONS, THE ENTHUSIASM. NOT TOO MANY GET TOUCHED BY THAT SPEED OF SPIRIT IN THEIR LIVES. HE BLESSED MINE. HE TOOK CARE OF ME, I WAS JUST A N.W.3 KID UNTIL PETER. HE TOOK ME INTO TOWN. WE HAD FUN.

How did you meet David Whitaker? I think As Tears Go By was literally the first arrangement he ever wrote.
DAVID DID NOT ARRANGE “AS TEARS GO BY” – MIKE LEANDER DID BOTH VERSIONS, MARIANNE AND THE STONES. DAVID DID A LOT OF THE ANDREW OLDHAM ORCHESTRA STUFF INCLUDING “THE LAST TIME” THAT THE VERVE TOOK AND TURNED INTO “BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY”. BRILLIANT MAN. HE ALSO WORKED WITH ME IN ITALY WITH FRANCESCO DI GREGORI AND ANNA OXA AT THE END OF THE 70′S.

In what way do you feel Marianne Faithfull “embarrassed” you? I’m surprised that you let her go so quickly, and let Tony Calder manage her, when she was such an obvious star.
PERHAPS EMBARRASSED IS TOO STRONG A WORD. I HAD DONE IT. I HAD HAD A HIT IN A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STYLE THAN THE ROLLING STONES. I SAW NO POINT IN TRYING TO REPEAT IT WITH MARIANNE, SO I TURNED HER OVER TO CALDER WHO HAD TWO HITS WITH “COME AND STAY WITH ME” AND “THIS LITTLE BIRD”. I GOT BORED. NOT HER FAULT, NOT ANYBODY’S.

I like the description of Tony Calder as having “slot machine” eyes. Was he as much of a caricature East Ender as he sounds? Do you still see him? Are either of you still thinking of remaking Expresso Bongo?
ACTUALLY TONY WAS FROM SOUTHAMPTON, HE JUST ENDED UP WORKING IN THE EAST END FOR JIMMY SAVILE. YES, I STILL SEE HIM. HE TELLS ME ALL ABOUT THE FUNERALS HE AND ANDY WICKHAM GO TO. IT’S SO PINTER. JET HARRIS WAS A BIG ONE. I HAVE WRITTEN THE FIRST EPISODE OF A FOUR-PARTER TV THING THAT IS “EXPRESSO BONGO” WRITTEN IN A WAY THAT ADDRESSES STUFF THAT WAS BOUND NOT TO BE DEALT WITH IN 1956. IT’S MORE VIOLENT, SEXUAL, MORE KNOWING AND MORE MUSICAL. I JUST HAVE NOT LEFT HOME ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT AND I PROBABLY WON’T.

Vashti Bunyan got you in “quite a flutter”, but she remembers having to paint the walls of the Immediate office. What do you remember of her?
WE HAVE JUST WORKED TOGETHER AGAIN. SHE HAS DONE A GREAT VERSION OF “BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY” FOR MY “ANDREW OLDHAM ORCHESTRA & FRIENDS PLAY THE ROLLING STONES SONGBOOK VOLUME 2″. VOLUME ONE WAS IN ’66. THE FUSION GUITARIST GARY LUCAS DID THE TRACK FOR IT IN BOGOTA. I’M MASTERING THE WHOLE THING IN VANCOUVER NEXT WEEK. SO, AS FOR THEN, I REMEMBER HER NOW.

I think The Poets are possibly the most underrated British group of the 60s. I like what you say about the Scottish drone sensibility. Did you feel shafted when Spencer Davis’s Keep On Running got to number one after pinching the bassline from That’s The way It’s Gotta Be?
NEVER KNEW THEY HAD NICKED IT. GUESS THE STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS HAS RUN OUT ON THAT ONE. SHAME I CANNOT CALL ALLEN KLEIN……

 You say that Brian Jones’s voice “shared none of the joy and mirth of the rest of the group”. Do you recall him ever trying to write songs to ‘fit in’?
“LORD OF THE FLIES” – THE MUSICAL VERSION. I PUT BRIAN IN A HOTEL ROOM WITH GENE PITNEY, WHOM AS YOU KNOW WAS A GREAT WRITER, TO TRY AND DRAG SOME OF THE SONGS OUT OF BRIAN THAT HE HAD BEEN MOANING HE HAD IN HIM. THEY WERE AWFUL. THE THING WITH POP OR ROCK IS THAT YOU CANNOT WRITE DOWN TO THE PUBLIC, YOU HAVE TO BE AT ONE WITH THE PUBLIC. THEY CAN SMELL IT WHEN YOU ARE NO LONGER ONE OF THEM, AND THAT’S WHEN YOUR RUN IS OVER. BRIAN NEVER STARTED A RUN, HE LOOKED DOWN ON POP WHILST WANTING TO BE AS BIG AS THE BEATLES.

Did it always feel like you and Mick were looking for the same thing with the Stones? It seems to me, through the changing productions, that you were constantly pushing forward looking for something new; I’m wondering if he was.
IN ENGLAND, APART FROM “NOT FADE AWAY”, RECORDING IN ENGLAND STILL HAD THEM JOINED AT THE HIP TO THE R’N'B THING. YOU MUST REMEMBER THEY STARTED OUT THINKING THAT WHITE ENGLISH MIDDLE CLASS KIDS DID NOT WRITE THE BLUES, LET ALONE SONGS. IT WAS AMERICA THAT SET US FREE. FIRST CHESS STUDIOS , THEN RCA IN HOLLYWOOD. I CANNOT SAY ENOUGH ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTIONS JACK NITZSCHE AND DAVE HASSINGER (ENGINEER) MADE AND IAN STEWART CONTINUED TO MAKE. WHAT DID I PUSH? AMBITION, STYLE, ATTITUDE, RECKLESSNESS, INDEPEPENDENCE. THE SONGS MICK & KEITH CAME UP WITH WERE WHAT GOT SERVED. I NEVER EXPECTED AN “AFTERMATH” OR “BETWEEN THE BUTTONS”. THE LATTER WAS ALMOST A COLLISION WITH RAY DAVIES. IF YOU IMAGINE HEARING SOME OF THE SONGS JUST ON ACOUSTIC GUITAR. IN THAT IT WAS ABOUT ENGLAND, DISPOSABLE INCOME, THE LUXURY OF DISPOSABLE GIRLS, FIRST LOVES, WISING UP… THE WHOLE SCHMEER. I THINK THAT, YES, MICK AND I WERE LOOKING FOR THE SAME THING. I GUESS IT WAS ALMOST ELVIS & THE COLONEL. I’VE NEVER HAD THAT THOUGHT BEFORE. MICK CONCENTRATED ON THE STAGE, I CONCENTRATED ON BACK STAGE. KEITH WAS KIND OF THE IN BETWEEN RUNNER, HE WANTED TO PLAY IN BOTH WORLDS. HE WOULD WANT THE STUDIO, THE ROAD, AND HE’D STILL WANT TO GO CHECK OUT SONNY & CHER AT THE DORCHESTER. MICK WAS ABOUT BEING MICK AND WE GOT ALONG UNTIL I COULD NOT SERVICE THAT PARTICULAR MICK.
FRANK SINATRA USED TO SWIM A LOT; I WONDER WHETHER HE TOOK THE RUG OFF. BUT HE USED TO SWIM TO BUILD UP HIS LUNGS AND POWER AND CONTROL OF HIS VOICE ON STAGE. A FRIEND OF MINE ONCE WENT INTO MY OFFICE BATHROOM IN BAKER STREET IN ’65 AND MICK WAS THERE PRACTICING HIS MOVES FOR THAT NIGHT’S “READY, STEADY, GO!”. THAT IS WHAT SINGERS DO. I DO NOT CARE HOW MANY TIMES HE STRAPS ON THE GUITAR, HE’S A SINGER. AND ONE OF THE GREATEST INTEPRETERS IN THE WORLD. DO NOT LET THE APPEARANCE FOOL YOU. THE VOCALS WERE ACE. FROM ’64-66 THEY WERE A POP BAND – SURE, R’N'B/ BLUES UNDERPINNINGS, BUT A POP BAND. SAME AS THE BEATLES WERE A POP BAND WITH CLUB/CABARET LEGS. DURING THAT TIME MICK, KEITH AND I WERE A CONSPIRACY. I TOOK HIM TO SEE NICHOLAS RAY ONCE ABOUT DIRECTING A MOVIE. RAY WAS BURNT OUT, ALL HE COULD TALK ABOUT WAS JAMES DEAN. THAT DID NOT SUIT MICK. AS WE LEFT AND WALKED TO MARBLE ARCH IN THE RAIN MICK SAID TO ME “DON’T EVER PUT ME THROUGH THAT AGAIN”.
THE NEXT PERIOD, THE THIRD VERSION OF THE 60′S , I JUST DID NOT BELONG TO. THE PUBLIC WERE NOW TAKING DRUGS. SO WAS THE BUSINESS. JOHN PEEL RULED. FOR A WHILE IT WAS ALL ABOUT THE ALBUM. I’M A THREE MINUTE MAN. BUT THOSE RECORDINGS SPOKE FOR SO MANY AND SOME OF THEM STILL PUT CUCUMBER SANDWICHES AND TEA ON MY FAMILY TABLE. DRUGS, DEAR. IT WAS THE NEXT STAGE OF THE REBELLION. THE AUDIENCE LOVED SEEING THE STONES AS STONED OR MORE STONED THAN THEY WERE.

I’m wondering which Immediate record you are proudest of. And also, whether signing Amen Corner was a purely commercial decision (I love If Paradise Is Half As Nice, but they do stick out as an overtly straight “pop” act).
THE FIRST ONE, “HANG ON SLOOPY” BY THE MCCOYS. WE PAID $500 OR $2000 TO BERT BERNS, ONE OF THE GREAT RECORD MEN OF ALL TIME, AND GOT A NUMBER ONE RECORD. THAT SAYS IT ALL. THE REST OF IT WAS DOWNHILL. YES, IT WAS NICE HAVING THOSE HITS WITH THE SMALL FACES, BUT APART FROM STEVE THEY WERE ALL MOANERS. AMEN CORNER WERE WORSE, IT WAS LIKE MANAGING TRADESMEN. STEVE WAS AS NEUROTIC AS BRIAN JONES, EXCEPT HE WAS A LEAD SINGER. HE HAD THE KILL FACTOR AND THAT’S WHAT SAVED HIM… FOR A WHILE. IMMEDIATE IS AS OVERBLOWN AS JOE MEEK. IT WAS MY WAY OF STAYING ALIVE AFTER I LEFT THE STONES.

What can you remember of Duncan Browne? I know next to nothing about him – I love his Immediate album.
I LOVED DUNCAN BROWNE. I OFTEN SAY THE JOB OF A PRODUCER IS TO HELP THE ARTIST FILL UP SPACE CORRECTLY. IT WAS A PLEASURE TO WATCH DUNCAN FILL UP THAT SPACE. SON OF A NORTHERN R.A.F FAMILY. NICELY CALCULATED, TALENTED, WHIMSICAL HIPPY. PLAYED EVERYTHING EXCEPT THE BASS AND DRUMS ON HIS RECORD. A PLEASURE TO OPEN THE DOOR FOR.

It seems in retrospect that you and Immediate bailed out at a crucial time in pop history, around the same time Nik Cohn wrote Awopbopaloobop, when humour and flash were pushed aside by heaviness and overt sincerity. When you tried to get back on the horse in the Glam era with Brett Smiley, did it feel as exciting?
NO, IT WAS AWFUL. THE WORLD HAD CHANGED. WE ENTERED THE FIRST TIME SPAN OF THE RECORD EXECUTIVES GETTING CASUAL AND DECIDING THEY KNEW MORE ABOUT THE MUSIC THAN THEIR ACTS. OF COURSE THERE WERE EXCEPTIONS – CHRIS BLACKWELL AND BOB KRASNOW IMMEDIATELY COME TO MIND. I HAD BEEN SPOILT, SO HAD THE STONES. WE WERE BORN INTO A TIME WHERE NOBODY KNEW WHAT THEY WERE DOING, EVERYBODY WANTED TO DO IT ANYWAY, AND WE WERE GIVEN A CHANCE TO LEARN ON THE JOB. A CHANCE GIVEN BY BOTH THE BIZ AND THE PUBLIC. THEN WE BLEW IT BY BECOMING EXPERTS.