Calling My Own Tune

FRUSTRATION has many fathers, but few children, among them bitterness, anger and resentment. Those had come to be the unhappy ingredients of my feelings towards EMI.

By 1959, I had been running Parlophone for four years. My recordings with Peter Sellers, Milligan, Flanders and Swann and the others had started to make the label mean something. Originally a poor cousin, it had become a force to be reckoned with. But I was still only earning something like £2700 a year. There wasn’t even a car thrown in; fifty-odd pounds a week was not very much for being boss of a record label - especially when you compare it with the £25,000 a year I was offered ten years later to rejoin EMI!

But it was not simply a straightforward question of my wanting more cash. I wanted participation, profit-sharing. I reckoned that, if I was going to devote my life to building up something which wasn’t mine, I deserved some form of commission. After all, the sales people got it, so why shouldn’t I?

In 1959 I signed a new contract for three years, which gave me a munificent rise of £75 a year. When that expired in April 1962, they offered me another contract which would eventually take me to about £3000 a year. ‘That’s all very well,’ I said, ‘but I’d much rather stay at my present level and have a commission on sales.’

They wouldn’t hear of it.

Til have to leave, then,’ I said.

Their generous response was: ‘If you feel like that, be our guest. Goodbye.’

I didn’t leave. Against my better judgement I signed, because I couldn’t afford to be out of work. But I had been sorely tempted, because I could see a new generation of young entrepreneurs, like Mickie Most, and Andrew Oldham who had the Rolling Stones, getting better deals from the companies for the same sort of work. Then, in 1962, along came Brian Epstein with the Beatles. If I thought that I had worked hard before, it was as nothing compared with the furious, frantic activity that was about to begin. I was working every evening and almost every weekend. It was very tough, but still great fun, because at least I had successful records coming out of my ears. That was my only reward. Apart from fun, I got - nothing.

In fact, I got less than nothing. It was usual for EMI employees to get a bonus at Christmas, geared to each person’s salary and generally equivalent to a week’s earn­ings. So at least I was looking forward to my Christmas bonus at the end of 1963. That year, the first full year of the Beatles, the directors of EMI announced with supreme generosity that everyone would receive four days’ pay as their Christmas bonus. Four days’ pay at the end of a year in which I had had the number-one record in the charts for thirty-seven weeks! But I didn’t even get that. When it failed to arrive, I phoned the accountants down at Hayes. ‘There must be some mistake,’ I said. ‘My secretary has had her four days’ pay, but I haven’t had any myself.’

‘Oh, no,’ they said, ‘there’s no mistake. You don’t get it now, you know.’

‘What do you mean, I don’t get it now?’

‘Well, it’s one of the rules of the company that people earning more than £3000 a year are on a different salary scale to the others, and they’re not entitled to a Christmas bonus. You’re earning just over £3000 a year.’

So that was it. What I got for that incredihle year’s work was a polite note saying, roughly, ‘What a marvellous job you’ve done, George. Absolutely super. Do better next year.’ That made up my mind, in no uncertain way. Blow this for a lark, I thought. I’m leaving. At that time I was halfway through my new contract, which stipulated that I had to give a year’s notice in writing if I wanted to leave, failing which the contract automatically renewed itself. So six months later, in the middle of 1964, I wrote to tell them: ‘Please take notice that in a year’s time I shall no longer be working here.’

That really set the cat among the executive pigeons. ‘What do you mean by it?’ I was asked. ‘After all, you’ve been with us for fourteen years, and suddenly you do this.

‘It’s very simple. I’ve had EMI right up to here.’

They wanted to know who was after me. I told them that no one was, and they clearly didn’t believe it. When I told them I was going out on my own, I got remarks like ‘Oh-oh, you won’t last long’. Then the tack changed. Throughout the following twelve months, at regular three-or four-week intervals, I was treated to lunches and drinks, and blandishments like ‘Come on now, old chap, I think you’re being a little silly about this. I mean, you should have more money, you’re quite right.’

The man I was dealing with mostly was the man who was now managing director of EMI Records, Len Wood. ‘I don’t want more money, Len,’ I told him. T just want commission. I want tangible results from my efforts, that’s all. I want to see something off each record that is mine. I don’t care how small it is, but that’s what I want.’

Eventually the crunch meeting came. Len Wood called me up to his office and said: ‘Look. I know you’re being very stubborn about this. But I’m determined to keep you on. You’re a good producer, and a good chap, and too good to lose. You’re definitely going to stay with us. I’ll tell you that right now.’

‘O.K., what have you got to offer?’ I asked him.

‘Well, you’re definitely going to get a commission on sales. What I propose is that you get 3% of our profits, minus your overheads.’

‘Well, that’s a bit vague,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me what it amounts to?’

‘Yes, yes, hold on,’ he said, like some angler convinced that the fish is about to take the bait. ‘Let’s take last year, for example. If this had been operating last year, 1963, you’d have ended up with a bonus of £11,000. How does that sound to you?’ he asked, triumphantly.

‘It sounds very good,’ I said. ‘But how do you arrive at that?’

‘Well, take your salary, and your secretary’s salary, and your assistant, and his typist, and for the sake of argument we’ll double that, to allow for overheads. To that we add the musicians’ fees that you paid during the year for session work. I’ve worked out that on that basis, your department cost us roughly £55,000 last year.’

‘I know what I did last year, and how hard I worked, but I think I’ve been jolly economical!’

‘Yes, you were very good,’ he said. ‘You always are. No problem about that. Now, on the other side of the sum, you’d have had 3% commission on our profits. O.K.? Last year, that would have amounted to £66,000. From that we take away the £55,000, which leaves you with £11,000.’

There was a pause, while I pondered. He watched me, obviously thinking I was a bit overwhelmed at his gener­osity. The truth was that the sheer horror of what he had just said was slowly beginning to seep into my brain.

Then I spoke. ‘Wait a minute. I think I must have misunderstood you. That must be turnover you’re talking about, not profits. Because £66,000 is 3% of two million two hundred thousand^

‘That’s right,’ he said, calmly.

‘But that must be turnover,’ I exclaimed.

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘That’s profit. That’s the profit we made from the sales of your records last year.’

With that simple sentence he cut straight through what­ever vestige of an umbilical cord still bound me to EMI.

But I had one final check to make, to ensure that what I was hearing was really true and make certain that the combination of my frustration and their meanness wasn’t making a paranoiac of me. ‘There’s one other thing, Len, You seem to be putting net against gross - the net of your profits against the gross of my costs. If, for example, the profits had been only one and a half million, then 3% of that would be fifty thousand. So with costs of fifty five-thousand, the theory would be that I’d pay you back five thousand!’

‘That’s the general idea,’ he said, with equanimity. Tm sorry. Perhaps the first example wasn’t very clear-cut.’

I was flabbergasted. First, the meanness of the whole thing was so transparent. Second, I could hardly believe the stupidity of the man in letting me know what I wasworth. ‘Thank you, very much,’ I said. ‘I haven’t changed my mind at all. I’m leaving.’

It is difficult, looking back, to describe the depths of my bitterness. I really had been devoted to the company, and always valued loyalty in other people. But there comes a moment when you realise that your idea of being a good, loyal worker without complications is being misconstrued, and you are being taken for a ride. I was bitter; I was sad - sad for the company that I knew I had to leave.

At that time, there was a pool of about eight people who did the creative work on the pop side for EMI. Apart from myself, there were Norman Newell, head of Columbia, Wally Ridley on HMV, and Norrie Paramor, together with our assistants. I decided to offer the young people the chance to go with me: my own assistant Ron Richards, Norman Newell’s assistant John Burgess, and in addition Peter Sullivan, who had been Wally Ridley’s assistant although he had left for Decca a year before, and whom I knew to be friendly with Ron and John. We had our fiercely devoted ladies, too. Carol Weston, John’s secre­tary, volunteered to come with us. Shirley Spence (now Mrs Burns) and my own Judy came with Ron Richards and myself. Seven of us were to start a new company. We left in August 1965, and with our going EMI was stripped of all its young blood. Only the old remained. In a sense, it was Martin’s Revenge.

But it didn’t stop there. The artists whom we were producing made up a formidable list. John had Adam Faith, Manfred Mann, and Peter and Gordon. Ron Richards was producing P. J. Proby and the Hollies. I had the Beatles, Cilia Black, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and the Fourmost. When we set up on our own, most of them chose to stay with us to produce their records. It was a great loss to EMI.

The way we set up AIR - Associated Independent Recording - was along the lines of a commune. The blue­print was based on the way Spike Milligan had worked when he had set up Associated London Scripts with Eric Sykes, and later Gallon and Simpson, Frankie Howerd and others. What I proposed to my partners was this: ‘Let’s start a producers’ organisation. It will be four for all, and all for one. We will pool our income, and we will distribute it according to the way we are earning. I’m still very keen on incentives, but to start off with we’ll have equal shares in the company, 25% each.’ I did add the rider that ‘I reckon I’m equal to you, but on the other hand, as George Orwell would have put it, I reckon I’m a bit more equal. All the same, we’ll have 25% each.’

I went on: ‘Income is another matter. If we’re making individual records, we’ll run the company on a levy from each person. We’ll each contribute 25% of our income to running the company. If I earn £10,000 from making records, I’m going to put £2500 into the company to run it. If you’re only earning £1000, you’ll only put in £250. At the same time, when it comes to paying ourselves, we’ll establish an upper limit of £10,000 for any one producer, and a lower limit of £3000 below which no one can fall. Any excess we’ll plough back into the business.’

Those were the broad parameters that we agreed. But the immediate problem was capital, or lack of it. To Start a company you need money for wages, rent, stationery, furniture, typewriters. And money was what we didn’t have. There had certainly been no golden, silver, or even lead handshake from EMI. When I left, Len Wood had said: ‘What about your pension? When you’re on your own you won’t get that.’ I got back all the contributions I had made over the years, which amounted to £1800. That was what I received for fifteen years with EMI.

Nevertheless, it was with EMI that we had to deal. The negotiations revolved around the Beatles, who by then were in full flood. I had, of course, told Brian Epstein that I intended to leave EMI, and he was very sympathetic, because he knew the problems. But I tried to put no pressure on him. ‘This doesn’t mean that you have to stay with me, Brian,’ I told him. ‘EMI may well choose another producer for the Beatles, someone on the staff. It’ll be up to you to decide. I don’t want my leaving to be an embar­rassment. But I intend to leave whatever happens, whether I record the Beatles or not.’

The decision was really taken by the sheer logic of the situation. I was probably the most successful producer EMI had. I guess they were frightened of changing horses in midstream, of splitting a winning partnership. &o tney approached me on the subject. ‘When you leave, you might lose the Beatles, mightn’t you?’ they said.

‘That’s up to them, isn’t it?’

‘Would you be available to record them if they wanted you to?’

‘Yes,’ I said, Til make myself available, but only on a royalty deal. I’m not having any of your old rubbish at £3000 a year.’

Linked with that negotiation was a deal by which EMI would take any of our products they wanted. We should be discovering and producing new artists, and EMI would have first opportunity to issue them. The person with whom I was dealing was the very man who had finally driven me to leave, Len Wood; and when it comes to negotiation, he is very canny indeed.

I should add here that there’s a curious ambivalence about my relationship with Len. I have bitter experiences from my negotiations with him. At the same time, the fact is that I grew up in the business with him. When I started with Parlophone, he was the sales manager for Columbia, and I’ve always been very fond of him. I think that the way in which he always conducted business is just his misfortune, part of the way he is made. He has a puritanical streak which has always disapproved of the raciness of the business, and he tries to exert his own restraint upon it. The irony is that he has been the most successful person in the record industry. At the Britannia Awards, made in 1977 to commemorate the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, when I was given the award for being the best record producer of the past twenty-five years, the award immediately preced­ing mine was a special one for outstanding services to the British record industry. The man who mounted the ros­trum to receive it was, you’ve guessed, Len Wood.

The contract I signed with him was enormously com­plicated. It took hours to study it, and the schedule attached to it which covered all territories and every kind of recording.

It seemed needlessly complex.

The nub of the contract was that if AIR made a record which it financed itself, it had to offer that record to EMI. If they accepted it, they would pay a royalty of 7% of the retail price. On the other hand, if we recorded any of EMI’s artists for them, we would get a producer’s royalty which I settled at 2% of the retail price. The highest royalty payable to an artist at that time was 5%, so we were asking for two-fifths of that. Considering that artists in those days were not making much of a living out of their records, and that record sales were not all that high, it wasn’t an extortionate demand, and EMI agreed. To give us capital, I asked for and got an advance of £5000 against that contract.

As you might expect, there was one item not covered by these general terms - the Beatles. For them, 2% was a figure way out of court as far as EMI were concerned. They took the view, which some might find curious in the circumstances,’ that I was not entitled to cash in on some­thing that was already established; they overlooked the thorny question of who had established it in the first place!

After months of negotiation, I finally settled on a series of producer’s royalties on Beatle records - one for Britain, one for America and one for the rest of the world. They were extremely complicated, as usual. In England, we got 1 % of the wholesale price, which became about Vz % retail. America, however, yielded far less; we were to receive 5% of the pressing fee that EMI would get from their American licencees.

Although Capitol Records Inc. was a subsidiary of EMI, it was perfectly possible that other companies might issue Beatle records. The soundtrack of the film A Hard Day’s Night had been issued on United Artists, they had an option on the Beatles appearing in two further pictures. Nowadays, royalties are clearly outlined in percentages of the selling price in all territories. But in the 1960s, it was quite normal to receive a proportion of the pressing fee that the originating company received. Before the Beatle breakthrough in America very few records of British origin had been pressed in the USA in any case.

If this seems a crazy deal to which to have agreed, the fact was that I had no alternative. It came at the end of months of haggling, and it had come down to a matter of agreeing or giving up the Beatles. Nor was I even too sure how much I could count on their support at that time, because by then they were becoming resentful at their own royalty deal. They blamed me for that, and rightly so, since I had been the one who had signed them to it, working on EMI’s hallowed principles. What they couldn’t know is that after the first year, when we’d already had tremendous sales, I went back to Len Wood on their

behalf.

‘This is nonsense - we ought to tear this contract up and start again,’ I told him. ‘We’ve got them now. We have to exercise the first option on the contract in July 1963; at that point they’re due to rise to a royalty of a penny farthing. I’d like to double their royalty immediately and make it twopence.’

‘O.K.,’ said Len, ‘that’s a good idea. Get them to sign for another five years.’

‘No, you misunderstand me,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to get anything from them. I just want to give them twopence.’

‘That’s not commercial sense, old chap. Give them more royalty, but get a further extension of time.’

I refused to do it. In a way, I washed my hands of it. I simply left him, saying: ‘You must give them a twopenny royalty.’ In the end they did get an increase, but only after long negotiation.

Now I, in turn, was feeling the weight of the EMI negotiating machinery, or perhaps I should say ‘machin­ations’. On top of the main AIR contract, I had to sign a separate document concerning me personally, which stip­ulated that I would be available for recording the Beatles at any time during the next ten years, and on the same conditions.

That was to boomerang on me in a big way. Many years later, after the Beatles had disbanded, Paul came and said that he wanted me to work with him on ‘Live and Let Die’. I was delighted, and at the outset didn’t think about the money. I never do; I get too excited about the prospect of work that interests me. So we went ahead and made ‘Live and Let Die’, which I scored and produced with Paul. Then I rang up Len Wood and said: ‘Look, Len, I’ve made this record with Paul, which he obviously wants to come out as a single. I want to know the royalty you’re going to pay me for my work on it, since it only concerns Paul and is therefore outside the terms of our contract. I reckon 2% would be fair, because that’s what everybody else gets, and is now a standard royalty, so I don’t think I’m being greedy. My normal rate now is 3%.’

‘My dear fellow,’ said Len, ‘you’ve forgotten that you signed a document saying you would operate on the same terms and conditions for a period of ten years from 1965, and we’re still within that period.’

‘But, Len, the Beatles don’t exist any more,’ I protested.

‘You look at the wording on your contract,’ he said. ‘It says that you will be available to record the Beatles or any one of them.’

‘That’s true, but they aren’t Beatles any more,’ I said.

‘Nevertheless old chap ... I’m afraid .. . you can take it to court, but the fact is—‘

‘But, Len,’ I interrupted, ‘are you telling me that when this record gets to number one in America, which I assure you it will, I’m only going to get 0.15 of a cent per record? Apart from anything else, Paul’s going to put one of his own pieces on the backing side, so I’ll only get half my normal royalty even at that low level.’

‘It’s hard luck, old chap,’ said Len, without managing to convey the feeling that he really meant it. Soon after­wards, he asked to see me at his office. ‘It does seem a bit hard,’ he said. Til tell you what I’ll do. I’ll treat it as though you had both sides of the record.’

‘What you mean to say is that you’ll pay me double a pittance,’ I said.

Ignoring that remark, he went on, ‘But before I do that, I’ll have to ring up Bhaskar and find out if he agrees, because it’s him who’s going to have to pay it.’

So, while I sat there in his office, he telephoned Bhaskar Menon in California. Even from where I was sitting I could hear Bhaskar laughing on the other end of the phone. Then he asked: ‘What does this mean to me, Len?’

‘For every hundred thousand records you sell, you’ll have to pay another 155 dollars.’

I sat there seething. If I hadn’t gone to Len Wood, my company would have received a princely $155 for every 100,000 sales. In his generosity he doubled it, and we got 310 dollars. It was the last straw. My relations with EMI were at their lowest ebb.

But worse was to come. We didn’t get paid at all for the Beatles album Let It Be; and we decided to get really bloody-minded. We took counsel’s opinion. While I was discussing it with him I happened to bring up the story of what had happened with ‘Live and Let Die’. By then he had studied the contracts in great detail, and he told me that in his opinion, I should not have been bound by that Beatle contract at that time. That made it even more galling - to know that had I taken legal advice earlier I could have gone straight ahead and sued EMI, instead of bothering to try to ‘negotiate’ with Len Wood. I’m glad to say that I have, finally, learned that lesson.

Of course, AIR wasn’t solely a matter of wrangling over contracts. We did spend some of our time doing what we set out to do, namely produce records! Our first signing was the group David and Jonathan. Their real names were Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, and they were song­writers who had written quite a few numbers for my other artists, including the hit ‘You’ve Got Your Troubles’. At that time they had been part of a group called the Fortunes. Now they were to be just a pair, we had to find a name. We couldn’t call them The Two Rogers, and we didn’t like Cook and Greenaway, so Judy hit on the idea of the biblical characters David and Jonathan, really as an example of two people who were very close friends. The first record I produced with them was ‘Michelle’, which the Beatles had not issued as a single. It became a big hit, here and abroad. Subsequently they had enormous success with the Coca-Cola song - Greenaway has been very strong on jingles - which went out as Td Like to Teach the World to Sing’.

In spite of having to devote a great part of my time to the established artists like Cilia and the Beatles, I still managed to find room for some of my old ‘nutty’ ideas. There were the Mastersingers, for example, a group of four teachers from Abingdon School who specialised in a very good cathedral-plainsong approach to singing. I hap­pened to hear their joke ‘party piece’, which was singing the Highway Code in a church style, and decided to record it. To a certain degree of surprise in the business, it became a hit, and I naturally wanted to follow it up. I asked them what else they could dream up, and they had the idea of recording the telephone directory. I thought that was marvellous. Sadly, the heavy hand of bureaucracy inter­vened. The Post Office declared: ‘We won’t allow you to do it. Joe Bloggs of Lanchester Drive might not want his address in a song.’ My view was that Mr Bloggs would have loved it; but the Post Office would have none of it, and the idea came to nothing.

I was only to use the Mastersingers once more, on the B-side of Peter Sellers’ Shakespearian single, which was a take-off of Laurence Olivier. The A-side was ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, which he did in the manner of Richard III, following Olivier’s version of that part. The B-side was ‘Help’, which the Mastersingers rendered in their best ecclesiastical manner as a background to Peter delivering the lines like a preacher from the pulpit.

That record has become a kind of classic; the Mastersingers, I suppose, have gone back to teaching. But then, the record business is full of little incidents like that, of people doing one thing that’s a bit exceptional, like Stanley Holloway’s ‘Albert and the Lion’. And there was a choir singing a number called ‘Happy Wanderer’, which became a huge success - the Obenkirchen Children’s Choir. Who? Well, I assure you that they made a lot of records following that; but none came anywhere near that first success. It isn’t even confined to pop music. The classics are full of examples, like LitohTs Scherzo from his Concerto Sym-phonique. I don’t suppose that many people have ever heard anything else by Litolff.

Another facet of my new independence was that I was able to write more on my own account. One day in 1967 Dick James, manager of Northern Songs, the Beatles’ company, rang me up and said: ‘You know the BBC are starting their new Radio One? The man in charge is called Robin Scott, and he wants Paul McCartney to write a signature tune for it. But there’s no way Paul is going to do it. If I can persuade him to use you instead, would you be interested?’

‘Of course;’ I said, ‘but if he wants Paul McCartney and gets me, that’s a poor substitute.’

‘Well, why don’t you meet him anyway?’ said Dick.

So I did just that, and Robin Scott, a most charming man, gave me his specifications. The music had to be very English, very contemporary, with classical overtones, and strikingly unusual. It was a fairly tall order; but I went away and thought about it, and came up with ‘Theme One’.

Since the idea was very much an orchestral one, rather than something to be knocked out on a piano, I decided the best thing to do was to make a record of it and send that to him. I wanted to use a cathedral organ to open it with, so, having done the main part of the recording, I did the introduction at the Central Hall, Westminster, where there is a large pipe organ, and cut that into the beginning of the record. That was quite an experience in itself, because I played the organ myself and found that the sound came out a good quarter of a second after I had placed my fingers on the keys. Playing in rhythm was really quite difficult, because it takes such a long time for the sound to go through the pipes. In fact the late Anna Instone, who was then the head of the BBC Record Library, is reputed to have said, on first hearing it: ‘Good God, it sounds like William Walton gone mad!’ But they were very pleased with it, accepted it, and put it out every morning and evening at the beginning and end of the programme. I guess, come to think of it, that a lot of people woke to the sound of the Martin fingers battling with that organ.

A couple of years later, in 1969,1 had a call from Richard Armitage, one of my old friends in the music world, who handled my affairs in America for a while. One of his clients was David Frost, whom I knew very well from the old days of ‘That Was The Week That Was’, when I had recorded the whole show, with Lance Percival, Millie Martin and the others. Richard told me that David was to do a new series of TV shows in America, but was fed up with his old signature tune. Would I like to write a new one? ‘Sure I would,’ I said. The piece I wrote was a kind of send-up of the idea of David in America, because he was always the ‘in’ person - always trying to be the most swinging person imaginable, while really fairly square within himself. It was a kind of gentle mickey-take, with a Sinatra-ish swing to it. I called it ‘By George, It’s the David Frost Theme’. Well, why not?

But I suppose the most traumatic week of those early years of AIR, indeed probably of my whole life, came in June 1967. Judy was extremely pregnant. On the Tuesday my father died. We were in the middle of moving house. And at the end of the week, the Beatles and I were due to be the British contribution to a worldwide satellite tele­vision link-up called ‘Our World’.

The show was to go out live to an expected audience of 200 million, and even the Beatles, who were seldom over­awed by anything, were a bit bomb-happy about it. ‘But you can’t just go off the cuff,’ I pleaded with them. ‘We’ve got to prepare something.’ So they went away to get something together, and John came up with ‘All You Need Is Love’. It had to be kept terribly secret, because the general idea was that the television viewers would actually see the Beatles at work recording their new single -although, modern recording being what it is, we obviously couldn’t do that for real; so we laid down a basic rhythm track first of all. I remember that one of the minor problems was that George had got hold of a violin which he wanted to try to play, even though he couldn’t!

I did a score for the song, a fairly arbitrary sort of arrangement since it was at such short notice. When it came to the end of their fade-away as the song closed, I asked them: ‘How do you want to get out of it?’

‘Write absolutely anything you like, George,’ they said. ‘Put together any tunes you fancy, and just play it out like that.’

The mixture I came up with was culled from the ‘Mar- I seillaise’, a Bach two-part invention, ‘Greensleeves’, and the little lick from ‘In the Mood’. I wove them all together, at slightly different tempos so that they all still worked as separate entities.

The day of the performance came, with television cam­eras rolling into the big Number One studio at Abbey Road. But I was still worried about the idea of going out totally live. So I told the boys: ‘We’re going to hedge our bets. This is how we’ll do it. I’ll have a four-track machine standing by, and when we go on the air I’ll play you the rhythm track, which you’ll pretend to be playing. But your voices and the orchestra will really be live_; and we’ll mix the whole thing together and transmit it to the waiting world like that.’

The BBC’s mobile control unit was set up in the fore­court at Abbey Road, and I was to feed them the mix from our control room inside the studios. Geoff Emerick, my engineer, was sitting right next to me but, even so, com­munication was rather hampered by the fact that a tele­vision camera was sitting right over us, watching our every move. To cap it all, at the last minute, just before we were due to go on the air, there was a panic call from the producer, sitting outside in the control van. ‘George, I’ve lost contact with the cameras in the studio. They can’t hear me. Can you relay my instructions to them?’ So, apart from worrying about the vast audience who were going to be watching me, and worrying about the sound we would produce, and worrying about the orchestra in the studio, which Mike Vickers was conducting, I had, at the moment of truth, to worry about linking the TV cameramen to their producer. It became so complicated that I was on the verge of hysterical laughter. I remember thinking: If we’re going to do something wrong, we might as well do it in style in front of 200 million people.

In the end the broadcast was a great success, and after some modifications to the tracks which ‘ had recorded during the actual broadcast we put out ‘All You Need Is Love’ as a single. It duly went to number one. Unfortu­nately, there was a sting in the tail for me. I was being paid the princely sum of fifteen pounds for arranging the music and writing the bits for the beginning and ending, and I had chosen the tunes for the mixture in the belief that they were all out of copyright. More fool me. It turned out that although ‘In the Mood’ itself was out of copyright, the Glenn Miller arrangement of it was not. The little bit I had chosen was the arrangement, not the tune itself, and as a result EMI were asked by its owners for a royalty.

The Beatles, quite rightly I suppose, said: ‘We’re not going to give up our copyright royalty.’ So Ken East, the man who had by then become managing director of EMI Records, came to me and said: ‘Look here, George, you did the arrangement on this. They’re expecting money for it.’

‘You must be out of your mind,’ I said. ‘I get fifteen pounds for doing that arrangement. Do you mean to say I’ve got to pay blasted copyright out of my fifteen quid?’

His answer was short and unequivocal. ‘Yes.’

In the end, of course, EMI had to settle with the publishers.

We’ve come a long way since then, but the journey hasn’t been without its tribulations. People always seemed to want to buy me, to own me, and I didn’t want to be owned. Way back, at the time I told Brian Epstein that I was thinking of leaving EMI, he had said: ‘You know, it would be nice for us to go into business together. With you handling the recording side and Dick James doing the publishing, we’d have a great company.’ But he wasn’t thinking of a partnership. He saw himself as the pinnacle of a vast empire of talent, with myself employed to run the record division. I had no intention of leaving one company in order to join another. I, too, wanted to be my own boss. Besides, although he was quite prepared to set me up in a record company in whose profits I would share, there was no question of my partaking in the other sides of the business, the publishing and the management. So I simply said: ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’ll stay as I am.’ Those brief business talks were the only ones we ever had, and the subject was never mentioned again, for which I am glad. As I was to learn later, it’s far better not to get into a business bed with friends.

The next approach came soon after we had opened our studios. This time it was from Gordon Mills, who had founded his Management Agency Music company (MAM) on the fortunes of Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck. Peter Sullivan, while still working for Decca, had intro­duced Tom Jones to Gordon. Tom had come to Decca for a recording test, and was looking for a manager. Gordon was just beginning to get into management. Peter brought them together, and since that time he had been producing the records of both Tom and, subsequently, Engelbert. Now Gordon carne to us with a breathtaking offer. Til buy you for two million pounds,’ he said.

‘But I don’t want to sell,’ I told him. ‘It’s silly, after all the effort to build up our own company.’

On the other hand, none of us had a penny to his name, and it was hard to resist the temptation of a cool half a million pounds each. So we got into the inevitable discus­sion, which he left to his ‘hatchet men’ to sort out. Then the true details began to emerge. ‘Of course we can’t give you two million in cash,’ they said. ‘We’ll give you paper shares in MAM, which at current quotation we think are worth such and such . . .’ and so it went on. When it was all boiled down, the offer was worth much less than two million, though still more than a million.

Needless to say, there was a cat’s cradle of strings attached, all of which added up to the fact that we wouldn’t be our own bosses. But then came the final touch which really decided us. We were given rather heavily to under­stand that if we didn’t do the deal and climb into bed with them, Tom and Engelbert would be taken away from Peter. That did it. ‘Fine,’ I said, ‘let it happen. To hell with them!’ That didn’t bind Peter - he could have left AIR and gone to work for Gordon; but he chose not to. Gordon, understandably I think, said in effect: ‘Sod ‘em. I’ll take Tom and Engelbert away from them and produce them myself. Why should I give them the royalties when I can make their records myself?’

So that was that. Then, in 1972, along came Dick James - the man to whom I had ‘given’ the Beatles, and who had become a multi-millionaire as a result. I think the truth of the matter is that he had never forgiven me for that. After all, it is a bit of a burden to carry around. He once said to me: ‘How many times must a man say “Thank you”?’ I never wanted him to say ‘Thank you’; I didn’t want it to get in the way of our relationship. But in the end it did.

Dick offered us a million pounds, and this time it was real cash. Since ours was a private company, the decision to sell had to be unanimous among the four of us. But we were all still penniless, and with a quarter of a million each being dangled in front of our noses we decided to talk. The fact was that, apart from our individual problems, we had no capital assets except for the company itself, into which we had been ploughing back everything we made. We wouldn’t have minded selling a bit of the company in order to raise some capital. But that was the problem; a little bit wasn’t enough. From Dick James’s point of view, it had to be what would eventually become a controlling interest.

The discussions went on throughout 1973, and finally ruptured at the start of 1974. The truth was that I got extremely annoyed, because I realised that he was trying to buy not only the company but also me and my future work. That was what he really wanted. Meetings became very acrimonious. He started to bang his fist on the table; I-started to shout at him; and we went our different ways. It was the very thing I didn’t want to happen - and I am sure in my mind that the underlying cause of it all was that nagging sense of guilty gratitude which went back to the day I suggested to Brian Epstein: ‘Why don’t you get Dick James as your publisher?’

The sale was off, but once again there was a sting in the tail for us. To our horror we found that the solicitors’ fees (which were pretty high, since they had been involved in all the negotiations) had to be borne, not by the company, but by us individually as shareholders. Nor could they be set against tax. So we actually lost money over the whole non-deal, and were worse off than before.

It was against that background that, in October 1974, we finally succumbed, if that is the word, to yet another advance: this time from Chrysalis, the empire formed by Chris Wright and Terry Ellis. But it was a different bag of tricks altogether. Initially, they only set out to buy a small proportion of the company. That gave us the capital we needed. Then again, although they wanted the option of buying a controlling interest in the company, which they now have, it was on the clear understanding that they would not interfere with the way we wanted to run it. To all intents and purposes it was to remain ours. It has been an ideal marriage, based on mutual respect. They have left us alone, except to give financial advice and help in management. That in turn has freed me to develop my post-Beatle period of work in America, which has increased the revenue of the company - and myself, naturally - to a vast degree.

The brilliant thing about the deal, as far as I am con­cerned, is that it has not cost me my freedom. I can do exactly what I want. I’m as free as the wind. If I want to write music for a film, I can. If I want to go away and write a symphony, I can. If I want - no, when I wanted to take the time to work on this book. I could. Those freedoms are very important to me. Had I wanted to be a millionaire, which I am not but which I know full well I could have been had I so wished, it would have meant giving up some of them. All I seek is that when I get too old, or sick and tired of what I am doing now, niy family and myself should be able to live comfortably. The idea of a string of yachts and private jets doesn’t appeal to me. Those goals in life bring only worries.

Not that the building of AIR had been achieved without any headaches; and there was one more to come. While I was in America in 1976, I received a shock, the nature of which could truly be described as incredible. Because that’s what it was: unbelievable. Each of the original partners in AIR, myself included, received a registered letter from EMI. It stated that EMI were terminating the original contract the following autumn, which they were entitled to do, but that notwithstanding the overall con-tractural arrangements, which clearly stated that royalties would be payable for twenty-five years, no more royalties would be paid from the termination date.

We were shattered. There was no question of anyone ringing us up to say: ‘Look, old boy, this is what we’re doing.’ Just a registered letter. John Burgess was. to say the least, extremely upset, and once again we had to consult lawyers. We discovered that there was a clause in the contract which by virtue (or disgrace) of its devious ambiguity gave them an argument on which to base their action. But the reason was different. We had been dissat­isfied with the royalties we had been receiving, and we had not had a statement for eighteen months. Tiring of this continual delay, we had put an audit into EMI. The result was the registered letter. In the end it was all settled, but not without a good deal of rancour.

All in all, it is fair to say that relations between AIR and EMI have been less than cordial over the years since we first broke free of them. That is despite the many successful records we have made for them since we went independent. It is despite the fact that in 1967, two years after I had left, the Beatles and I made for EMI the record which some people have been kind enough to describe as the most influential in pop history: the record that went by the title Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 906